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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF NATIONS 

A CONTRIBUTION TO THE 
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NBW YORK • BOSTON - CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF 
NATIONS 

A CONTRIBUTION TO THE 
PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 



BY 

G. E. PARTRIDGE 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1919 

All rights reserved 



3 it 

"P3 



copteight, 1919 
Bt the macmillan company 



Set up and electrotyped. Published, November, 1019 



^ !0 1919 



©CI.A536906 



PREFACE 

This book contains two closely related studies of the 
consciousness of nations. It has been written during the 
closing months of the war and in the days that have fol- 
lowed, and is completed while the Peace Conference is 
still in session, holding in the balance, as many believe, the 
fate of many hopes, and perhaps the whole future of the 
world. We see focussed there in Paris all the motives 
that have ever entered into human history and all the ideals 
that have influenced human affairs. The question must 
have arisen in all minds in some form as to what the place 
of these motives and ideals and dramatic moments is in 
the progress of the world. Is the world governed after 
all by the laws of nature in all its progress? Do ideals and 
motives govern the world, but only as these ideals and mo- 
tives are themselves produced according to biological or 
psychological principles? Or, again, does progress depend 
upon historical moments, upon conscious purposes which 
may divert the course of nature and in a real sense create the 
future? It is with the whole problem of history that we are 
confronted in these practical hours. At heart our problem 
is that of the place of man in nature as a conscious factor 
of progress. This is a problem, finally, of the philosophy 
of history, but it is rather in a more concrete way 
and upon a different level that it is to be considered here, — 
and somewhat incidentally to other more specific ques- 
tions. But this is the problem that is always before us, 
and the one to which this study aims to make some con- 
tribution, however small. 

The first part of the book is a study of the motives of 



vi Preface 

war. It is an analysis of the motives of war in the light 
of the general principles of the development of society. We 
wish to see what the causes of past wars have been, but we 
wish also to know what these motives are as they may 
exist as forces in the present state of society. In such a 
study, practical questions can never be far away. We 
can no longer study war as an abstract psychological prob- 
lem, since war has brought us to a. horrifying and humiliat- 
ing situation. We have discovered that our modern world, 
with all its boasted morality and civilization, is actuated, 
at least in its relations among nations, by very unsocial mo- 
tives. We live in a world in which nations thus far have 
been for the most part dominated by a theory of States as 
absolutely sovereign and independent of one another. Now 
it becomes evident that a logical consequence of that theory 
of States is absolute war. A prospect of a future of absolute 
war in a world in which industrial advances have placed 
in the hands of men such terrible forces of destruction, an 
absolute warfare that can now be carried into the air 
and under the sea is what makes any investigation of the 
motives of war now a very practical problem. 

If the urgency of our situation drives us to such studies 
and makes us hasten to apply even an immature sociology 
and psychology, it ought not to prejudice our minds and 
make us, for example, fall into the error of wanting peace 
at any price — an ideal which, as a practical national 
philosophy, might be even worse than a spirit of militarism. 
What we need to know, finally, in order to avoid these 
errors which at least we may imagine, is what, in the most 
fundamental way, progress may be conceived to be. If we 
could discover that, and set our minds to the task of making 
the social life progressive, we might be willing to let wars 
take care of themselves, so to speak, without any radical 
philosophy of good and evil. We ought at least to exam- 
ine war fairly, and to see what, in the waging of war, 
man has really desired. A study of war ought to help us to 



Preface vii 

decide whether we must accept our future, with its possibil- 
ity of wars, as a kind of fate, or whether we must now 
begin, with a new idea of conscious evolution, to apply our 
science and our philosophy and our practical wisdom seri- 
ously for the first time to the work of creating history, and 
no longer be content merely to live it. 

As to the details of the study of war — we first of all 
consider the origin and the biological aspects of war; then 
war as related to the development, in the social life and in 
the life of the individual, of the motive of power. The 
instincts that are most concerned in the development of 
this motive of power are then considered, and also the 
relations of war to the aesthetic impulses and to art. Na- 
tionalism, national honor and patriotism are studied as 
causes of war. The various " causes " that are brought 
forward as the principles fought for are examined ; also the 
philosophical influences, the moral and religious motives 
and the institutional factors among the motives of war. 
Finally the economic and political motives and the historical 
causes are considered. The conclusion is reached that the 
motive of power, as the fundamental principle of behavior 
at the higher levels, is the principle of war, but that in so 
general a form it goes but a little way toward being an 
explanation of war. We find the real causes of war by trac- 
ing out the development of this motive of power as it 
appears in what we call the " intoxication impulse," and in 
the idea of national honor and in the political motives of 
war. It is in these aspects of national life that we find 
the motives of war as they may be considered as a practical 
problem. But we find no separate causes, and we do not 
find a chain of causes that might be broken somewhere 
and thus war be once for all eliminated. Wars are prod- 
ucts of the whole character of nations, so to speak, and 
it is national character that must be considered in any prac- 
tical study of war. It is by the development of the char- 
acter of nations in a natural process, or by the education 



viii Preface 

of national character, that war will be made to give way 
to perpetual peace, if such a state ever comes, rather than 
by a political readjustment or by legal enactments, however 
necessary as beginnings or makeshifts these legal and polit- 
ical changes may be. 

The second part of the book is a study of our present 
situation as an educational problem, in which we have for 
the first time a problem of educating national conscious- 
ness as a whole, or the individuals of a nation with reference 
to a world-consciousness. The study has reference espe- 
cially to the conditions in our own country, but it also has 
general significance. The war has brought many changes, 
and in every phase of life we see new problems. These may 
seem at the moment to be separate and detached conditions 
which must be dealt with, each by itself, but this is not 
so ; they are all aspects of fundamental changes and new 
conditions, the main feature of which is the new world-con- 
sciousness of which we speak. Whatever one's occupation, 
one cannot remain unaffected by these changes, or escape en- 
tirely the stress that the need of adjustment to new ideas and 
new conditions compels. What we may think about the fu- 
ture — about what can be done and what ought to be done, is 
in part, and perhaps largely, a matter of temperament. At 
least we see men, presumably having access to the same 
facts, drawing from them very different conclusions. Some 
are keyed to high expectations ; they look for revolutions, 
mutations, a new era in politics and everywhere in the so- 
cial life. For them, after the war, the world is to be a 
new world. Fate will make a new deal. Others appear to 
believe that after the flurry is over we shall settle down to 
something very much like the old order. These are con- 
servative people, who neither desire nor expect great 
changes. Others take a more moderate course. While 
improvement is their great word, they are inclined to believe 
that the new order will grow step by step out of the old, and 
that good will come out of the evil only in so far as we 



Preface ix 

strive to make it. We shall advance along the old lines 
of progress, but faster, perhaps, and with life attuned to 
a higher note. 

The writer of this book must confess that he belongs 
in a general way to the third species of these prophets. 
There is a natural order of progress, but the good must, 
we may suppose, also be worked for step by step. The 
war will have placed in our hands no golden gift of a new 
society; both the ways and the direction of progress must 
be sought and determined by ideals. The point of view in 
regard to progress, at least as a working hypothesis, be- 
comes an educational one, in a broad sense. Our future we 
must make. We shall not make it by politics. The institu- 
tions with which politics deals are dangerous cards to play. 
There is too much convention clinging to them, and they 
are too closely related to all the supports of the social 
order. The industrial system, the laws, the institutions of 
property and rights, the form of government, we change 
at our own risk. Naturally many radical minds look to the 
abrupt alteration of these fundamental institutions for the 
cure of existing evils, and others look there furtively for 
the signs of coming revolution, and the destruction of all 
we have gained thus far by civilization. But at a differ- 
ent level, where life is more plastic — in the lives of the 
young, and in the vast unshaped forms of the common life 
everywhere, all this is different. We do not expect abrupt 
changes here nor quick and visible results. Experimenta- 
tion is still possible and comparatively safe. There is no 
one institution of this common and unformed life, not even 
the school itself, that supports the existing structures, so 
that if we move it in the wrong way, everything else will 
fall. When we see we are wrong, there is still time to cor- 
rect our mistakes. 

Our task, then, is to see what the forces are that have 
brought us to where we stand now, and to what influences 
they are to be subjected, if they are to carry us onward 



x Preface 

and upward in our course. Precisely what the changes in 
government or anywhere in the social order should be is 
not the chief interest, from this point of view. The de- 
tails of the constitution of an international league, the 
practical adjustments to be made in the fields of labor, 
and in the commerce of nations, belong to a different order 
of problems. We wish rather to see what the main cur- 
rents of life, especially in our own national life, are, and 
what in the most general way we are to think and do, if 
the present generation is to make the most of its opportuni- 
ties as a factor in the work of conscious evolution. 

The bibliography shows the main sources of the facts 
and the theories that have been drawn upon in writing the 
book. Some of the chapters have been read in a little 
different form as lectures before President G. Stanley Hall's 
seminar at Clark University. More or less of repetition, 
made necessary in order to make these papers, which were 
read at considerable intervals, independent of one another, 
has been allowed to remain. Perhaps in the printed form 
this reiteration will help to emphasize the general psycholog- 
ical basis of the study. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



Preface . v 



PART I 

NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE MOTIVES 
OF WAR 

CHAPTER 

I Origins and Biological Considerations .... 3 
II Unconscious Motives, the Reversion Theories of 

War, and the Intoxication Motive 17 

III Instincts in War: Fear, Hate, the Aggressive Im- 

pulse, Motives of Combat and Destruction, the 
Social Instinct 38 

IV Aesthetic Elements in the Moods and Impulses of 

War 70 

V Patriotism, Nationalism and National Honor . . 78 

VI " Causes " as Principles and Issues in War ... 97 

VII Philosophical Influences no 

VIII Religious and Moral Influences 117 

IX Economic Factors and Motives 128 

X Political and Historical Factors 142 

XI The Synthesis of Causes 153 



PART II 

THE EDUCATIONAL FACTOR IN THE DEVELOP- 
MENT OF NATIONS 

I Educational Problems of the Day 161 

II Internationalism and the School 168 



Contents 

CHAPTER PAGE 

III Internationalism and the School {Continued) . . 184 

IV Peace and Militarism 197 

V The Teaching of Patriotism 211 

VI The Teaching of Patriotism (Continued) . . . 226 

VII Political Education in a Democracy 242 

VIII Industry and Education 269 

IX New Social Problems 290 

X Religion and Education After the War .... 305 

XI Humanism 309 

XII Aesthetic Experience in Education 315 

XIII Moods and Education: A Review 319 

Bibliography 327 

Index 331 



PART I 

NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE 
MOTIVES OF WAR 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF NATIONS 

A CONTRIBUTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY 
OF HISTORY 

CHAPTER I 

ORIGINS AND BIOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS 

The simplest possible interpretation of the causes of war 
that might be offered is that war is a natural relation be- 
tween original herds or groups of men, inspired by the pred- 
atory instinct or by some other instinct of the herd. To 
explain war, then, one need only refer to this instinct as 
final, or at most account for the origin and genesis of the in- 
stinct in question in the animal world. Some writers ex- 
press this very view, calling war an expression of an instinct 
or of several instincts ; others find different or more complex 
beginnings of war. 

Nusbaum (86) says that both offense and defense are 
based upon an expansion impulse. Nicolai (79) sees the 
beginning of war in individual predatory acts, involving vio- 
lence and the need of defense. Again we find the migratory- 
instinct, the instinct that has led groups of men to move 
and thus to interfere with one another, regarded as the 
cause of war, or as an important factor in the causes. 
Sometimes a purely physiological or growth impulse is in- 
voked, or vaguely the inability of primitive groups to adapt 
themselves to conditions, or to gain access to the necessities 
of life. Le Bon (42) speaks of the hunger and the desire 
that led Germanic forces as ancient hordes to turn them- 
selves loose upon the world. 

3 



4 The Psychology of Nations 

Leaving aside for the moment the question of the nature 
of the impulses or instincts which actuated the conduct of 
men originally and brought them into opposition, as groups, 
to one another, we do find at least some suggestion of a 
working hypothesis in these simple explanations of war. 
Granted the existence of groups formed by the accident of 
birth and based upon the most primitive protective and eco- 
nomic associations, and assuming the presence of the emo- 
tions of anger and fear or any instinct which is expressed 
as an impulse or habit of the group, we might say that the 
conditions and factors for the beginning of warfare are all 
present. When groups have desires that can best and most 
simply be satisfied by the exertion of force upon other 
groups, something equivalent to war has begun. 

If we take the group (as herd or pack) and the instinct 
as the original factors or data of society, however, we prob- 
ably simplify the situation too much. The question arises 
whether the motives are not more complex, even from the 
beginning, and whether both the tendencies or impulses by 
which the group was formed or held together and the mo- 
tives behind aggressive conduct against other groups have 
not been produced or developed in the course of social rela- 
tions, rather than have been brought up from animal life, 
or at any point introduced as instincts. We notice at least 
that animals living in groups do not in general become ag- 
gressive within the species. Possibly it was by some peculi- 
arity of man's social existence, or his superior endowment 
of intelligence or some unusual quality of his instincts, per- 
haps very far back in animal life, that has in the end made 
him a warlike creature. Man does seem to be a creature 
of feelings rather than of instincts as far back as we find 
much account of him, and to be characterized rather by the 
weakness and variability of his instincts than by their defi- 
niteness. It is quite likely, too, that man never was at any 
stage a herd animal ; in fact it seems certain that he was not, 
and that his instincts were formed long before he began to 



Origins and Biological Considerations 5 

live in large groups at all. So he never acquired the mech- 
anisms either for aggression or defense that some creatures 
have. Apparently he inherited neither the physical powers 
nor the warlike spirit nor the aggressive and predatory in- 
stincts that would have been necessary to make of him a nat- 
ural fighting animal; but rather, perhaps, he has acquired 
his warlike habits, so to speak, since arriving at man's estate. 
Endowed with certain tendencies which express themselves 
with considerable variability in the processes by which the 
functions of sex and nutrition are carried out, man never 
acquired the definiteness of character and conduct that some 
animals have. He learned more from animals, it may be, 
than he inherited from them, and it is quite likely that far 
back in his animal ancestry he had greater flexibility or 
adaptability than other animals. The aggressive instinct, 
the herd instinct, the predatory instinct, the social instinct, 
the migratory instinct, may never have been carried very 
far in the stock from which man came. All this, however, 
at this point is only a suggestion of two somewhat diver- 
gent points of view in regarding the primitive activities 
of man from which his long history of war-making has 
taken rise. 

The view is widely held and continually referred to by 
many writers on war and politics, that the most fundamental 
of all causes of war, or the most general principle of it, 
is the principle of selection — that war is a natural struggle 
between groups, especially between races, the fittest in this 
struggle tending to survive. This view needs to be exam- 
ined sharply, as indeed it has been by several writers, in 
connection with the present war. This biological theory or 
apology of war appears in several forms, as applied to-day. 
They say that racial stocks contend with one another for 
existence, and with this goes the belief that nations fight 
for life, and that defeat in war tends towards the extermina- 
tion of nations. The Germans, we often hear, were fiehtinsr 
for national existence, and the issue was to be a judgment 



6 The Psychology of Nations 

upon the fitness of their race to survive. This view is very 
often expressed. O'Ryan and Anderson (5), military writ- 
ers, for example, say that the same aggressive motives pre- 
vail as always in warfare : nations struggle for survival, and 
this struggle for survival must now and again break out 
into war. Powers (75) says that nations seldom fight for 
anything less than existence. Again (15) we read that 
conflicts have their roots in history, in the lives of peoples, 
and the sounder, and better, emerge as victors. There is 
a .selective process on the part of nature that applies to 
nations; they say that especially increase of population 
forces upon groups an endless conflict, so that absolute 
hostility is a law of nature in the world. 

These views contain at least two very doubtful assump- 
tions. One is that nations do actually fight for existence, — 
that warfare is thus selective to the point of eliminating 
races. The other is that in warlike conflicts the victors are 
the superior peoples, the better fitted for survival. Con- 
fusion arises and the discussion is complicated by the fact 
that conflicts of men as groups of individuals within the 
same species are somewhat anomalous among biological 
forms of struggle. Commonly, struggle takes place among 
individuals, organisms having definite characteristics and 
but slightly variable each from its own kind contending 
with one another, by direct competition or through adapta- 
tion, in the first case individuals striving to obtain actually 
the same objects. Or, again, species having the same rela- 
tions to one another that individuals have, contend in a 
similar manner. 

Primitive groups of men, however, are not so definite; 
they are not biological entities in any such sense as individ- 
uals and species are. They are not definitely brought into 
conflict with one another, in general, as contending for the 
same objects, and it is difficult to see how, in the beginning, 
at least, economic pressure has been a factor at all in their 
relations. Whatever may have been the motive that for the 



Origins and Biological Considerations 7 

most part was at work in primitive warfare, it is not at 
all evident that superior groups had any survival value. 
The groups that contended with one another presumably 
differed most conspicuously in the size of the group, and 
this was determined largely by chance conditions. Other 
differences must have been quite subordinate to this, and 
have had little selective value. The conclusion is that 
the struggle of these groups with one another is not essen- 
tially a biological phenomenon. 

The fact is that peace rather than war, taking the history 
of the human race as a whole, is the condition in which 
selection of the fittest is most active, for it is the power 
of adaptation to the conditions of stable life, which are 
fairly uniform for different groups over wide areas, that 
tests vitality and survival values, so far as these values are 
biological. It may be claimed that war is very often, if 
not generally, a means of interrupting favorable selective 
processes, the unfit tending to prevail temporarily by force 
of numbers, or even because of qualities that antagonize 
biological progress. Viewing Avar in its later aspects, we 
can see that it is often when nations are failing in natural 
competition that they resort to the expedient of war to com- 
pensate for this loss, although they do not usually succeed 
thereby in improving their economic condition as they hope, 
or increase their chance of survival, or even demonstrate 
their survival value. It is notorious that nations that con- 
quer tend to spend their vitality in conquest and introduce 
various factors of deterioration into their lives. The infer- 
ence is that a much more complex relation exists among 
groups than the biological hypothesis allows. Survival value 
indeed, as applied to men in groups, is not a very clear con- 
cept. There may be several different criteria of survival 
value, not comparable in any quantitative way among them- 
selves. 

Scheler (77) says that we cannot account for war as a 
purely biological phenomenon. Its roots lie deep in organic 



8 The Psychology of Nations 

life, but there is no direct development or exclusive develop- 
ment from animal behavior to human. War is peculiarly 
human. That, in a way, may be accepted as the truth. 
Warfare as we know it among human groups, as conflict 
within the species is due in some way to, or is made possible 
by, the secondary differentiations within species which give 
to groups, so to speak, a pseudo-specific character. And 
these differences depend largely upon the conditions that 
enter into the formation of groups, — upon desires, impulses 
and needs arising in the social life rather than in instinct 
as such. These characteristic differences are not variations 
having selective value, but are traits that merely differentiate 
the groups as historical entities. These secondary varia- 
tions have not 'resulted in the elimination of those having 
inferior qualities, but have shared the fortunes of the groups 
that possessed them, — the fortunes both of war and of 
peace. War, from this point of view, belongs to history 
rather than to biology. It belongs to the realm of the 
particular rather than to the general in human life. War 
has favored the survival of this or that group in a particular 
place, but has .probably not been instrumental in producing 
any particular type of character in the world, either physical 
or mental. 

Very early in the history of mankind, in fact as far back 
as we can trace history, we find these psychic differentia- 
tions, as factors in the production of war. There are sig- 
nificant extensions and also restrictions of the consciousness 
of kind pertaining to the life of man, as distinguished from 
animals. Animals have not sufficient intelligence to estab- 
lish such perfect group identities as man does, and they lack 
the affective motives for carrying on hostilities among 
groups. They remain more clearly subjected to the simple 
laws of biological selection, and are guided by instincts 
which do not impel them to act aggressively as groups to- 
ward their own kind. Man proceeds almost from the be- 
ginning to antagonize these laws, so that it is very likely 



Origins and Biological Considerations 9 

that the best, in the biological sense, has always had some 
disadvantage, in human life, and may still have. The real 
value that has thus been conserved by this human mode of 
life consists in preserving a relatively large number of 
secondary types or individual groups, rather than in insuring 
the predominance of any one biologically superior type. 
Man's work in the world is to make history. Even though 
war were a means of making a biologically superior type 
of man prevail we should not be justified in saying that it 
is thus vindicated as a method of selection. 

Many writers whom we do not need to review in great 
detail have contributed to the objections to the biological 
principle as an explanation of war. Trotter (82) examines 
the doctrine that war is a biological necessity, and says that 
there is no parallel in biology for progress being accom- 
plished as a result of a racial impoverishment so extreme 
as is caused by war, that among gregarious animals other 
than man direct conflict between major groups such as can 
lead to the suppression of the less powerful is an incon- 
spicuous phenomenon, and that there is very little fighting 
within species, for species have usually been too busy fight- 
ing their external enemies. Mitchell (10) says that war is 
not an aspect of the natural struggle for existence, among 
individuals ; that there is nothing in Darwinism that explains 
or justifies wars; that the argument from race is worthless 
since there are no pure races. M'Cabe (76) maintains that 
war is not a struggle between inferior and superior national 
types. Dide (20) also discusses the question of differences 
of race as causes of war, and the use that has been made 
of this dogma. Chapman (39) says that no race question 
is involved in the present war as has been supposed. There 
is no conflict of economic forces, no nations compelled to 
seek expansion. 

Precisely how warfare originated (assuming that it arose 
in one way) we shall probably never know, since we cannot 
now reconstruct the actual historv of man. We think of 



io The Psychology of Nations 

men as living at first in groups containing a few individuals, 
and presumably for a long time these small and isolated 
groups of men prevailed as the type of human society. We 
can already detect the elements of conflict in these groups, 
but whether warfare in the sense of deadly conflict origi- 
nated there we cannot know ; or whether it was only in the 
experience of men as large migrating hordes which 
had been formed by the amalgamation of smaller groups 
under the influence of hunger or climatic change, that war- 
fare in any real sense came into the world. We do not 
know to what extent the small groups of men we find in 
conditions of savagery now represent primitive conditions. 
Fortunately, however, some of these problems of origin are 
of but little practical importance and their interest is chiefly 
antiquarian or historical. 

The assumption that in the behavior of original groups 
of men war arose as a natural result of the life of the group 
seems to be an allowable hypothesis. Whether warlike con- 
duct came by some modification of the habits brought up 
from animal life as instinctive reactions, or whether man 
invented warfare from some strong motive peculiar to hu- 
man life, and produced it intelligently, so to speak, under 
stress of circumstances may have to remain an open ques- 
tion so far as conclusive evidence is concerned. What we 
lack is a knowledge of the type and form of the instincts of 
man in his first stages, and the degree and kind of intelli- 
gence he had. But the reconstructed pre-human history of 
man so far as we can make it seems to show, as we have al- 
ready suggested, that early man could have had no definite 
herd instincts or pack instincts such as some of the animals 
have, that his habits were plastic and guided by intelligence 
rather than by impulse. His social life, his predaceous 
habits, the habit of killing large game, his warfare must 
have been a gradual acquisition, and from the beginning 
have been very different as regards motive and development 



Origins and Biological Considerations 1 1 

from animal behavior which judged externally may seem to 
be like it in character and to have the same ends. 

There are already inherent in any group of human indi- 
viduals that fits into such knowledge of man past and pres- 
ent as we have, all the necessary motives of warfare in some 
form. There are the reactions of anger made to any threat 
or injury, fear, the predaceous impulse and habit, originat- 
ing in hunger, the motives arising in sexual rivalry. These 
motives are the source of behavior toward both members 
of the group and outsiders. There is no absolute dis- 
tinction between these objects. It is of the nature of man 
to be both aggressive and social. One instinct or mo- 
tive did not come from the other, since there are emotions 
and desires at every stage that tend, some of them to unite 
and some to disrupt, the group. The sense of difference of 
kind and the fear of the strange on the one hand, and the 
effect of propinquity and practical necessity in the conduct 
in regard to the familiar on the other make the reactions 
different in degree in the two spheres but not different in 
kind. There is no aggressive instinct or war motive that 
is directed exclusively toward the outsider. Certain tenden- 
cies toward violence and strife, modified and controlled 
within the group, become unrestrained when directed toward 
the stranger. Among these motives are those of sexual 
rivalry, fear, anger, desire, and the play motive as an ex- 
pression of any instinctive habits of aggression that may 
have been phyletically established. 

Since every individual creature has his needs that can be 
satisfied only by preying in some way upon other animals of 
his own species or others, the motives for strife are original 
in organic life. Every animal lives in a world of which he 
is suspicious, and rightly so. He is suspicious toward the 
members of his own kind and group, and toward all 
strangers he shows watchfulness and fear. There are two 
motives, therefore, of a highly practical nature that con- 



12 The Psychology of Nations 

tribute to a general state of unfriendliness in animal life. 
Both the motives of conflict within the group, the habit of 
aggression and its complement, fear, and the jealousy and 
display motive (the display itself probably having originated 
as a show of ferocity on the part of males) must have been 
transferred to relations between groups as a natural result 
of the proximity of groups to one another, although this 
process is not quite so simple as this would imply, since in 
part the outside groups are produced by these very same 
antagonistic motives in the group, for example the driving 
out of young males because of sexual jealousy. The pres- 
ence of other groups must have excited all the motives of 
warfare at a very early stage, and this contrast had the 
effect of stimulating the social feeling of the group and de- 
veloping control of impulses on the part of individuals 
within the group toward one another. So the motives of 
combat, as shown within the group and toward outsiders, 
developed, so to speak, by a dialectic process. 

Fear and the predatory impulse, the sexual and display 
motive, play or the hunting activity as a pleasure for its 
own sake, with a desire perhaps to practice deception and 
to exercise intelligence, presumably introduced some kind 
and degree of definite warfare among primitive groups of 
men at a very early stage of human life, although of course 
such a conclusion can be only speculative. Increasing in- 
telligence, the power of discriminating and of reacting to 
secondary likenesses and differences, and especially the rec- 
ognition of the nature of death, and the advantages of kill- 
ing rather than merely overcoming an enemy, the discovery 
of the use of weapons, introduced warfare into the world. 
Warfare is, then, not simply the negation of some original 
principle of mutual aid, nor yet an expression of instinctive 
aggressiveness or cruelty, but it is a product of original en- 
dowment, of conditions of life, and of intelligence all to- 
gether. It is practical, but at no stage can it be said to be 
wholly practical. Changes must have taken place in war- 



Origins and Biological Considerations 13 

fare as in other social reactions as men passed through a 
number of stages from primitive wandering or a relatively 
unstable life to a stable life, but the motives of conflict can- 
not have been added to in any essential way. Through all 
the course of history all the motives that originally made 
individuals of a group or the groups as wholes antagonistic 
have remained, although the mental processes have become 
generalized, fused and transformed. If Gumplowicz is 
right we can still detect in any great society to-day all the 
primitive individual and group animosities, tempered down 
and held in check by laws and customs, but still existent and 
by no means overcome and made innocuous. 

These motives of warfare might best be traced out in 
four more or less definite principles of conduct, or four pur- 
poses of war that appear throughout primitive life. These 
are: 1) thievery, including wife capture; 2) the fear mo- 
tive; 3) cannibalism; 4) the display motive, with the de- 
sire to intimidate and to display power (more or less closely 
associated with the play motive, the love of hunting, gaming 
and the dramatic motive). 

Cannibalism, of course, is a special expression of the 
predatory motive in general, or it is mainly that. Canni- 
balism was certainly established early in primitive life, at 
least early enough to antedate all religion, and although its 
origin and history are shrouded in mystery, the motive was 
quite certainly practical. Evidently it was widespread if 
not universal. Whether it was introduced as a result of a 
failure of animal food, as some think, or has- a still more 
simple explanation as a part of the original impulse which 
led men at a certain stage of their development to become 
hunters, cannot be determined. We know, however, that 
the alien human being was to some extent included under 
the same concepts as the animal enemy and prey, and pre- 
sumably some of the strongest motives that led men to 
attack animals also included man as an object, since the 
alien group was regarded as in some degree different in 



14 The Psychology of Nations 

kind from the in-group. It may have been in the great 
migrations when all the aggressive motives were increased 
that cannibalism became fixed as a habit. 

Cannibalism may well have been the primitive motive of 
warfare as serious deadly combat, but all predatory habits 
must have contributed to establishing a more or less ha- 
bitual state of warfare among all groups of men. The 
predatory raid, with the reaction of defense, when carried 
on as a group activity in any form, is in fact war, so far as 
attack and defense were serious and deadly, and intelligence 
and weapons were sufficiently developed to make man a dan- 
gerous opponent. This predatory motive, of course, ex- 
tended to all desired objects, and these objects must have 
included all objects that could most simply be acquired by 
stealing. They included food, women, and all other pos- 
sessions. The custom of driving out young males from the 
group, by the jealousy of the old males, and of preventing 
males from obtaining females within the group must have 
been one of the earliest and one of the strongest incentives 
to predatory warfare. At first all property of the group, 
for so long as groups were wandering, was to some extent 
common, and attack and defense must have been common. 
The objects of predatory raids which produced group com- 
bat must have changed with the social life. When habi- 
tation became fixed and property therefore more individual, 
probably the predatory impulse itself became relatively a 
less important factor in combat. 

Two motives grow out of the practical motives of combat, 
which we may assume to have been the original motives. 
These are both emotional rather than instinctive. Fear and 
anger, that is to say, become more or less detached motives 
for attack. Fear is increased with the increase of intelli- 
gence up to a certain point at least — with the increase 
of the capacity for understanding danger, and of the 
powers of man to become dangerous. All the experience of 
combat engenders anger and hatred, and these moods of 



Origins and Biological Considerations 15 

hatred toward enemies are cumulative, absorb all the de- 
tached motives and feelings of antagonism between groups, 
preserve and give continuity to the memories of conflict, 
and so produce among groups the fear and hate motive. 
The feeling of fear arouses the motive of aggression, and 
the feeling of anger; and these in turn generate more fear, 
until both the moods of anger and fear and a perpetual 
state of animosity and warfare are induced among contend- 
ing groups. Thus out of primitive motives of combat the 
feud as a more generalized and psychical antagonism is pro- 
duced, and these states are possible because of the powers of 
generalization in man which extend to the emotions and 
make possible the formation of deep moods. 

In another direction, also, the practical motives tend to 
be superseded by more abstract and more subjective mo- 
tives. Both in the fear and anger reactions and in the mo- 
tive that originates in the sexual impulse — display of males, 
and combat with reference to females — consciousness of 
prowess for its own sake, and the display of it in order 
to intimidate the enemy, arise. Into this motive of war 
there enter all the antagonisms that come from self-con- 
sciousness, the whole force of the diathesis of developing 
sexuality, with its jealousy and cruelty, and tendencies to 
perversion. The force of this motive of prowess must at 
some period of development have become very great. It 
extends out into a love of combat for its own sake, reen- 
forces other motives, and issues in the more abstract mo- 
tives of honor and power that we see playing such a great 
part in modern warfare. 

These primitive motives of war are not merely numerous. 
They fuse, reenforce one another, and almost from the be- 
ginning, we must suppose, create complex states of con- 
sciousness, and form moods. War very early, we say, must 
contain all the motives that ever enter into it. The preda- 
tory impulse, the love of deception, of conquest, the love 
of combat for its own sake, the hunting impulse, the motive 



1 6 The Psychology of Nations 

of power, of fear and anger, the impulse of display and the 
more primitive sexual motives, the motives of courage and 
jealousy, even a beginning of the aesthetic motive, are all 
there. They become the warlike mood or produce war, in 
the sense in which we now understand it, only when the 
intelligence gives to the relations between groups definite 
intentions and directions, and out of the many impulses that 
lead to combat, a distinctive motive and mood are derived. 
So we may say with all certainty that the making of war 
is not a mere perpetuation of some alleged instinct of mur- 
der, surreptitiously retained by man in his rise from an ani- 
mal state, but it is quite as much a product of his whole 
social nature. It becomes established as life grows more 
complex, as specific desires increase in number. Man is 
not, as thus seen in these genetic views of him, a self-tamed 
animal. He has not arrived at a precarious and unstable 
social condition out of a primitive individualism which is the 
essence of his warlike nature. On the other hand, he has 
not degenerated from some ideal pacific state. Ages ago 
he was already divinely human, and possessed those capaci- 
ties both for cooperation and antagonism out of which war 
is created. 



CHAPTER II 

UNCONSCIOUS MOTIVES, THE REVERSION THEORIES OF 
WAR, AND THE INTOXICATION MOTIVE 

There are several interesting theories of the causes of war, 
now in the field, most of them inspired by our recent great 
conflict, all of which (but no one perhaps completely or 
quite justly) may be described as based upon the view that 
war is an outbreak of, or reversion to, instincts and modes 
of activity which as primitive tendencies remain in the indi- 
vidual or in the social life and which, from time to time, 
with or without social cause, may break loose, so to speak, 
and hurl man back into savagery. These theories of war 
show us, in some cases, human character in the form of 
double personality, or liken civilization to a thin and inse- 
cure incrustation upon the surface of life, beneath which all 
that is animal-like and barbaric still remains smoldering. 
Some of these theories we need to review briefly here. 

Bertrand Russell, in answer to the question, " Why do 
men fight ? " which is the title of his book dealing with 
the causes of war, says, in substance, that men fight be- 
cause they are controlled by instinct (and also by authority), 
rather than by reason. Men will cease fighting when reason 
controls instinct, and men think for themselves rather than 
allow their thinking to be done for them. This view does 
not explicitly state that war is a reversion, for man may be 
at no point better or more advanced than a creature of in- 
stinct, but it lays the blame for war upon the original nature 
of man. Man has instincts which presumably he has 
brought with him from his pre-human stage, and some of 

17 



1 8 The Psychology of Nations 

these instincts are, on their motor side, the reactions of 
fighting. 

Le Bon (42) speaks of a conscious and an unconscious 
will in nations, and says that the motives behind great na- 
tional movements may be beneath all conscious intentions, 
and may anticipate them. The Englishman in particular 
lives, in a sense, a divided life, since there is a manifest in- 
consistency between what he really is and what he thinks. 
What these instincts are, Le Bon does not specify; presum- 
ably they may be either better or worse than the conscious 
motives. 

Trotter (82) and also Murray (90) consider war from a 
biological standpoint, regarding it as a herd phenomenon. 
Trotter's view, especially his interpretation of Germany, 
which we are not to consider here, is original and important. 
War is a result of the action of a herd instinct, a specific 
instinct which is peculiar in one respect, in that it acts upon 
other instincts but has no definite motor reactions of its 
own. War is the result of the action of the herd instinct 
in man upon the old instinct of aggression. At least aggres- 
sive war is. Men in all their social relations show the 
play of these instincts ; in war it is the old aggressive instinct, 
the old passion of the pack, that dominates them; and it is 
the ancestral herd- fears that overcome them in their panics. 
It is the herd instinct that makes men in groups so highly 
sensitive to the leader, whose relations to the herd or pack 
are always dependent upon their recognizing him as one of 
the group ; that is, as acting in accordance with the desires 
of the herd. 

It is by the union of the herd, Murray says, or through 
the herd instinct, that suppressed unconscious impulses are 
given an opportunity to operate ; when the human herd 
is excited by any external stimulus, the old types of reaction 
are brought into play. Curiously, in such times, leadership 
may be assumed by eccentric and even abnormal members 
of the group — by those who are governed by perverted in- 



Unconscious Motives 19 

stincts ; by men who are touched with the mania of suspicion, 
or who even suffer from homicidal mania. 

The essential point of these biological views is that, when 
the human herd is subjected to any influences that tend to 
arouse the herd instinct — that is, to unite the herd in any 
common emotion or action, the old instinctive forms of re- 
sponse are likely to be brought to the front. Whatever the 
stimulus, the tendency is for the herd to fixate its attention 
upon some external object, which at once is reacted to with 
deep emotion. Plainly, if this be true, if herd instinct does 
throw human society from time to time and from various 
causes into attitudes of defense and offense with the appro- 
priate emotional reactions, and if in such times leaders are 
likely to appear, having exaggerated instinctive tendencies, 
there is always close at hand and ready a mechanism by 
which war can be produced, war being precisely of the type 
of mass action, under strong emotion, of a group closely 
united under spectacular leadership, with attention cramped 
upon some external object hated or feared. 

Nicolai (79), who believes strongly that war is wholly 
useless, compares it to the play we turn to when the actions 
performed in the play are no longer in themselves practical. 
War is a great debauch, perhaps now the last the race will 
experience. War is like wine : in it nations renew their 
youth. It is not the war itself, but the mood it produces 
that we crave, and this mood is longed for because in it old 
and sacred feelings of patriotism are aroused, and these 
feelings are themselves survivals, something romantic, 
archaic, no longer needed in the present stage of social life. 

Novicow (83) says something very similar to this. War 
is a survival, like the classical languages, for example. Men 
begin to find beauty and glory in these things only after 
the activities they represent are useless. The principle of 
their survival is nothing more or less than that of habit. It 
is habit that keeps war alive; wars are a concession to our 
forebears, a following in the footsteps of a dead past. 



20 The Psychology of Nations 

We are presenting these views in a somewhat loose and 
illogical order, but let us look at still a few more of them. 
Patrick thinks of war as precisely a plunge into the prime- 
val. War is a reaction, a regression, but still it is some- 
thing more than a mere slipping of the machinery of life. 
It is craved; and it is craved because it offers relief from 
the tension of modern life. It is not quite clear whether it 
is because we are tired and want rest for our over-worked 
functions, or are merely dull and need renewed life, but in 
any case, when the desire has accumulated enough, back we 
fall into the primeval. Then all the tensions and inhibitions 
of civilized society disappear. Society, relieved of its cross- 
tensions, is resolved and organized into an harmonious and 
freely acting whole, seeking a definite object. Life is sim- 
plified, and becomes again primitive. Old and vigorous 
movements take the place of the cramped thinking of our 
civilized life. All that keeps us modern and evolved is 
relaxed. 

Naturally the Freudians have their own explanation of 
war in terms of subconscious wishes, repressed feelings and 
instincts. Freud (78) himself says that war is a recrudes- 
cence (and a mastery over us) of a more primitive life 
than our own. The child and the primitive man, as we 
have long known them in the Freudian theories, live still in 
us and are indestructible. We have supposed ourselves to 
have overcome these primitive impulses, but we are far from 
being so civilized as we thought. The evil impulses, as we 
call them, which we supposed had at least been transformed 
are changed only in the sense that they have been influenced 
by the erotic motive, or have been repressed by an outer 
restraint, an educational factor, the demands of what we 
call civilized environment. But let us not deceive ourselves ; 
the old impulses are still alive ; the number of people who 
have been transformed by civilization is less than we 
supposed. All society is at heart barbaric. Judged by our 
unconscious wishes, we are a band of murderers, for the 



Unconscious Motives 21 

primitive wish is to kill all who oppose our self-interests, 
and war is precisely a reversion to the method of free ex- 
pression of our desires in action. Society and the authority 
of government have suppressed these primitive reactions in 
the individual, but instead of eliminating them altogether 
from human nature (which, of course, no legislation can 
do in any case), government and society as a whole have 
appropriated all these primitive actions to their own use. 

Jones (37), the Freudian, distinguishes two quite differ- 
ent groups of causes of war: the conscious causes, all ex- 
pressed in the feeling of patriotism ; and the unconscious 
causes, which grow out of the desire to release certain orig- 
inal passions — the passions of cruelty, destruction, loot and 
lust. 

The central thought of all these views, it is plain, is that 
war belongs to the past. It is a return to something that, 
in a significant sense, is the natural man — is his instinctive 
and unguarded self. It is also plainly implied in these views, 
here and there, that modern man, by thus lapsing into war, 
is renewing his stock of primitive nature. The modern 
man is in unstable equilibrium, and whatever upsets that 
equilibrium sends him back through the ages. MacCurdy 
(37), having Jones and Freud in mind, protests against 
these views to this extent : he says that the present state of 
man, rather than the past, is the natural state, and that at 
least in reverting to the primitive state man becomes un- 
natural. 

The question upon which our discussion of this aspect 
of war is going to hinge is whether, or in what sense, the 
activities and the feelings aroused in war are reversions. 
Wars, beyond a doubt, do involve to a greater extent than 
peaceful life certain instinctive reactions. Wars are so 
impulsive and so persistent that we must suppose very deep 
motives to be engaged in war ; and the fact that in all wars, 
and on both sides of every war, the feelings and the reac- 
tions are fundamentally the same, indicates that war is some- 



22 The Psychology of Nations 

thing less differentiated than the peaceful life. But that 
war can be explained in terms of instinct as such, or that 
war can be disposed of as a mere recrudescence of old im- 
pulses and types of conduct buried beneath civilization, is 
very much to be doubted. War, in the first place, in its 
moods and passions, appears to be too complex, too synthetic 
a process to be quite what this view would imply. It is too 
intimately related to everything that occurs and exists in 
present day society. It means too much, concretely and 
with reference to objects specifically desired for the future. 
War is related to the past, but to a great extent, it may be, 
wars represent and contain the present and look toward the 
future. The distinctions and differences in the interpreta- 
tion of war thus implied, and the conflicting understanding 
of facts about society and individual life cannot be very 
clear at this point, but that there are involved fundamental 
problems of psychology, and perhaps divergent ways of 
thinking of history and society, and of such principles of 
philosophy at least as are implicated in aesthetics, and finally 
of the practical questions that are of most interest in these 
fields to-day, may begin to be evident. 

There is one aspect of war, or one question about war, 
that seems to suggest that its problems are more subtle and 
less simple than the instinct-theories imply. War has been, 
and still is, the great story of the world, the center of all 
that is dramatic and heroic in life. Its mood — and that is 
the essential thing in it, whatever else war may have been, 
and in spite of all its horrors — is ecstatic. War produces, 
or is produced by, states of mind that affiliate it with all the 
other ecstasies — of love, religion, intoxication, art. We 
may well doubt whether any explanation of war can ever 
be satisfactory that does not take this quality of it fully into 
account. One may say, of course, that war is ecstatic just 
because it does satisfy instincts, that the satisfaction of all 
instincts is pleasant, or that pleasure is the satisfaction of 
instincts. But there is more in the problem than that. 



Unconscious Motives 23 

Love, the source of the other great romance of the world, 
is not exhausted by calling it a gratification of the sexual 
instinct, or a primitive tendency of all organic life. It is 
at the other end of the process of development of it, so to 
speak, its place as a present motive in life, that it is most 
significant, and it is by no means explained by calling it a 
product of sexuality. 

So with war. Made out of instincts, it may be, but it 
is not explained as the sum of instinctive reactions. That, 
at least, is our thesis. It is the fact that war is a great 
ecstasy of the social life, that it holds a high place in art, 
that history — our selective way of reacting upon human 
experience — is in a large measure the story of war, that 
its representations in dramatic forms are almost endless in 
variety; it is such facts that give us our clew to the nature 
of the problems of war, and also to the practical questions 
of its future. 

Hirschfeld (98), in a short study of war, has enumerated 
and briefly described some of the forms in which the ecstasy 
of war appears, or some of the ecstasies that appear in war. 
He speaks of the ecstasy of heroism, and the ecstatic sense 
that accompanies the taking part in great events, the con- 
sciousness of making history. On a little lower plane there 
is the excitement of adventure and of travel that gives 
allurement to the idea of war in the mind of the soldier, and 
which also glorifies the soldier ; the sensation hunger ; the 
cupidus rerum novarum; the ecstasies of nature and free- 
dom, suggested by the very term " in the field." Add to 
these the ecstasies of battle and of victory, the Kampfs- 
rausch and the Siegestrunkcnheit , and the mood of war in 
which acts unlawful for the individual become not only 
lawful but highly honorable when done collectively. There 
is also in the mood of war the social intoxication, the feeling 
on the part of the individual of being a part of a body and 
the sense of being lost in a greater whole. The lusts of con- 
quest, and of looting, and of combat, all contribute to this 



24 The Psychology of Nations 

spirit of war. And finally, summing up all the other ecsta- 
sies, the strong inner movement of the soul expressing itself 
in strong external movements, and in the sense of living 
and dying in the midst of vivid and real life. 

Hirschfeld's analysis of the ecstasy of war discloses deep 
and powerful motives in the individual mind and the social 
life. We can find this ecstasy everywhere in the history of 
war, sometimes as a national exaltation, sometimes as a 
more restricted phenomenon. Villard (54), speaking of 
the first days of the war, says that in Germany then one 
could see " the psychology of the crowd at its noblest 
height." The exaltation of a people, whatever its content, 
or its purpose, is an awe-inspiring spectacle. There can 
be no greater display of the sources of human power. In 
this particular time of exaltation we can see in action reli- 
gious ecstasy, the cult of valor, and the stirring of more 
fundamental and more primitive feelings. This exaltation 
has its imaginative side. There is a dream of empire in it. 
There is an exhibition of the forms of royalty, its display, 
its color and its dramatic moments. There is the spirit of 
militarism and of great adventure, the excitement of chance, 
of throwing all into the hands of fate, the aesthetic and the 
play motives which are never separated from the practical 
passions in times of great exaltation. 

This mood of war differs, of course, at different times 
under different circumstances. The French people cer- 
tainly went into the great war with no such exaltation. 
We should have to look elsewhere in French history for the 
ecstatic war spirit, when the French are moved by the mo- 
tives of glory and prestige, or by the vanity and eroticism 
which Reuthe thinks are the essential qualities of the spirit 
of France. But taking history as a whole there is no lack 
of ecstasy in the spirit of war. We find in this ecstasy 
exalted social feeling, joy of overcoming the pain of death, 
the exultation of sacrifice, love of display, feeling of trag- 
edy, the ecstasy of exerting the utmost of power, love of 



Unconscious Motives 25 

clanger, the gambling motive, the love of battle, love of all 
the dramatic elements of military life. These separate 
ecstasies, taken all together, make up the exalted mood of 
war. They represent war in its most significant moments. 

In this mood of war instincts are exhibited, but they 
seem to be in some way transformed, so that the whole has 
a meaning different from the parts. The mood of war is 
not a mere effect, a reaction to events. It is a longing — 
plastic and indefinite it may be — but looking toward the 
future. It is a craving, not for the release of definite in- 
stincts, but is' rather a force or a desire which, however mis- 
guided the expression of this mood or this energy may be, 
is the essence of what individuals and society to-day are. 
We may find in this mood, upon superficial examination, 
mere emotions, but in a final and deeper analysis, we may 
suppose, its content and its meaning will be found to be 
specific — purposes which constitute what is deepest and 
most continuous in the individual and in society, but which 
at the same time give to this mood its generality of direction 
and of form. 

It is the war-mood, then, that must be explained, if we 
wish to understand the motives and causes of war. And 
this war mood, so it appears, is related to all the other great 
ecstasies — of art, religion, intoxication, love. It is, of 
course, then, a psychological problem, and one having many 
radiations and deep roots. The view that we are going to 
take is that in the mood of war we have to do essentially 
with what, relying upon previous studies of the principles 
of art and of the motives that are at work in society that 
produce the phenomena of intemperance we may call the 
intoxication motive. That this intoxication motive is a 
plastic force, a mood containing desires and impulses that 
may be satisfied in a variety of ways, since as a sum of de- 
sires it is no longer specific and instinctive, is the main im- 
plication of this view. It is this generic quality and com- 
positeness of the purpose of the individual and of the spirit 



26 The Psychology of Nations 

of society that obscures the meaning of history and often 
makes individual lives so enigmatical, and which also makes 
these purposes of individuals and nations so persistent, 
sometimes so terribly forceful and insatiable. 

As contrasted with instincts, the motive of intoxication 
we say, is plastic, and its object — and this is one of its 
most significant characteristics — is to produce exalted 
states of consciousness mainly for their own sake. At least 
this experience of exaltation is the main or central thing 
sought. It is a tendency to seek exalted states, but at the 
same time, we should say, specific instincts gain some kind 
of satisfaction, although not at all necessarily by the per- 
formance of the external movements appropriate to them. 
They may obtain a certain vicarious satisfaction. The 
mood gives conduct a general direction, it provides a mo- 
tive and the power, it is the source of interest and of de- 
sire, but its objects may be indefinite and variable. 

Some general aspects of the moods that we have to con- 
sider have already come to light, and these may prove to be 
valuable clews to a psychological analysis of their content. 
There is the ecstatic state, and the craving to experience it, 
the love of excitement, the desire to have a sense of reality, 
the impulse to seek an abundant life, the love of power and 
of the feeling of power. These are all related, and at least 
they have something in common, but it is the last mentioned, 
the motive of power, that seems to be the most definite and 
to have the clearest biological meaning and implications. 
Indeed this motive of power (and we must here again de- 
pend upon previous studies of the aesthetic motives and 
other aspects of ecstasy), appears to be fundamental in art, 
in religion, and in history. It is a concept that gives us a 
vantage ground for the interpretation of some of the most 
significant parts of life. The idea of power and the craving 
for power as a general motive, but also containing and ex- 
ploiting specific purposes and desires, runs through all the 
history of art and religion and also through history itself. 



Unconscious Motives 27 

Religion is based upon the desire to exert and to feel power, 
and it is the manifest and indeed the expressly acknowl- 
edged purpose of all primitive art, and is concealed and 
implied in all later art. Art is practical, an effort to realize 
a sense of power, to become a god (just as in his motive of 
play the child desires more than anything else to realize 
himself as a man), to influence people, or objects, or gods, 
to exert magic somewhere in the world. In the feeling of 
power which the ecstatic state produces, the belief in the 
power of art is established, and at the same time deep and 
hidden impulses are exploited. On the feeling side, and 
indeed in every way, this ought to explain how art, religion, 
and all states of intoxication have a common element, if 
they are not primitively the same. 

A psychology of the war moods must undertake to trace 
the history of the motive of power, considering its begin- 
nings as the desire and sense of satisfaction connected with 
the performance of definite instinctive acts, and with their 
physiological results, with the exertion of power and the 
production of effects upon objects. It is in the performance 
of instinctive acts, in which superiority is inborn, that ani- 
mal and man obtain their original sense of power or supe- 
riority. As capacities are differentiated and multiplied, the 
experiences of achievement generate a mood and a more 
general impulse, a desire to exert power for its own sake. 
The sensory or organic elements tend to predominate in this 
generalized motive, simply because the specific actions in 
which the sense of power is obtained cannot so readily, or 
cannot at all, be generalized. Such an organization of ac- 
tions and states in consciousness demands nothing new in 
principle, implies nothing different from that found on the 
intellectual side when concepts are formed from concrete 
experiences. The associative processes and the selective 
principles everywhere present in mental action are all that 
are necessary to be assumed here. We may take advantage, 
however, of the special investigations of affective logic, and 



28 The Psychology of Nations 

the like, as giving evidence in support of such a conception 
of the formation of moods as is here being worked out. 
We are likely to make the mistake of thinking the specific 
instincts and the impulses and pleasure states that we find 
in human experiences, such as ecstasy, as the whole of these 
experiences, and to overlook the constant process of gen- 
eralization that goes on in all the mental activity of the in- 
dividual. For example, we may think of various plays 
which involve instinctive actions as being wholly explained 
by, or to be made up of, these instinctive acts alone, whereas 
in most plays that take the form of excitement, abandon or 
ecstasy, there are being employed processes which are gen- 
eral in the sense of reenforcing all the specific acts alike, and 
are yet specific in the sense that they are themselves, or have 
been, practical : that is, they are in reality processes that 
belong to the fundamental strata of consciousness — to the 
nutritional and reproductive tendencies. Out of these tend- 
encies the more complex processes of which we speak are 
made, but they are no mere repetition of old forms. That, 
at least, is the way these ecstatic moods appear from our 
point of view. 

It is precisely because ecstatic moods are presumably thus 
general and -composite, and involve fundamental instincts 
(but in such a way that they are transformed, and no longer 
present in body, so to speak, but are represented by their 
organic processes rather than appearing as specific concate- 
nated chains of motor events), with their purposes changed 
and their whole meaning determined by the present states 
to which they belong, that we should be inclined to say that 
to explain any great and powerful movement in the lives 
of individuals or nations as merely reversions is very in- 
adequate and indeed wrong. They are emotional forces 
that are at work, composite feelings and moods rather than 
instincts. They are aspects of the continuity of the life 
of the present, rather than of the fragmentary past that 
lives in the individual. These forces are plastic, complex 



Unconscious Motives 29 

and organized, rather than haphazard and suppressed. 
They are directive, creative, but incidentally they make 
amends for and satisfy and exploit the past. 

If these principles be valid, their application to the psy- 
chology of war seems plain. The central purpose or motive 
of war to-day is a craving for the realization of the sense of 
power. This is the subjective side of it, the unconscious, 
instinctive, mystical motive so often observed. The ques- 
tion of the actual power exerted or displayed is not the most 
essential point of this war mood. It is the manipulation 
and the satisfaction of inner factors that make the most 
significant aspect of these moods. History, we should 
hold, is in great part an unfoldment of this motive. Na- 
tions crave, as collective or group consciousness, the feeling 
of power. Just as we say the child in his plays wants to 
be a man, and the individual in his art feels himself a god, 
so nations in their wars and in their thoughts of wars, feel 
themselves more real, realize themselves as world powers, 
and as supreme and divine. To be first and all is indeed 
the purpose that runs in these moods, and this we believe 
is true, in its way, of the most insignificant and hopelessly 
decrepit of peoples. This must be taken account of in the 
interpretation of history, and in that larger pedagogy, the 
pedagogy of nations to which we just now look forward. 

These moods which, slumbering, become the ecstasies of 
war are vague, even secretive. They contain aggressive 
thoughts that are disavowed, vanities that are concealed, 
fears that present a quiet front. But we must not think 
that the war mood always intends war. Nations have their 
subjective lives and inner history, and their vicarious satis- 
factions. A nation in arms already feels itself victor by 
reason of its sense of power. Otherwise few wars would 
be entered upon. Dreams and talk of war may incite to 
war, but they may also satisfy the desire and need of war. 
There is a certain narcissism in nations, and this is due pre- 
cisely to the fact that patriotism as a feeling and impulse 



30 The Psychology of Nations 

necessarily lacks in the group consciousness the mechanisms 
for externalization, except indeed in war. War is an es- 
cape, for a people, from a kind of subjectivism, from the 
evils of a self-love to perhaps the greater evils of self- 
assertion. 

Nations in war, and even in the thought of war realize 
their own potentiality, take account of stock of their pow- 
ers, and create an ideal, romantic and dream world. They 
make castles-in-air, and these castles-in-air always take the 
form of empires. War, precisely like art, is at first more 
and then less practical, and sought for practical purposes. 
More and more there is a craving for glory, for prestige, 
for subjective satisfaction and symbols of power. Nations 
take lands that they cannot use for any good purpose, 
inflict indemnities that may ruin themselves rather than 
their enemies, exploit economic relations that are dangerous 
to the nations' very existence. It is power that they seek, 
and it is power they thus create, but it is often different in 
form and in value from what the conscious purpose holds. 
They are really seeking general and subjective states in part 
for their own sake. Psychologically it is all one and the 
same whether we realize this power by actually killing an 
enemy, or believe we overpower him by the performance of 
some mystic and ecstatic act, or in some more modern way 
become confident in our own power and prestige. National 
life, in order to maintain its integrity, must move upon a 
plane of intense feeling. It must have objectives, but these 
objectives are not necessarily of value in themselves. This 
is the delusion and enigma of history. Peoples enact 
dramas in their own subjective lives, and these things they 
do have reference to the desires for inner experiences. We 
may say that nations, like individuals, crave for luxuries of 
the emotional life, but to think of these experiences as 
merely static pleasure-states, after the fashion of a certain 
conception of the emotions, would be wholly to misunder- 
stand this view which we have been trying to present. 



Unconscious Motives 31 

These subjective states are full of meaning and of purpose. 
They are not reactions, but rather, in so far as these col- 
lective lives are normal and progressive, these moods and 
ecstasies are more of the nature of crucibles in which old 
reactions and feelings are fused, given new direction, new 
forms and in a certain way a new nature. History is made 
in these moods of war. They are subjective forces, but 
they are also objectively creative. 

What is it that nations really desire? What is it, we 
might ask, that an individual desires? On the side of ex- 
perience it is an abundant life, a life full of the feeling of 
power. This craving for an abundant life is a craving for 
the satisfaction of many desires, instinctive and acquired, 
but it is also a craving, in some sense, for more desire. It 
is not merely to satisfy desires, but to realize more life by 
creating more desires that experience is sought. That is 
the philosophy of the life of the superior individual; it is 
also the principle of the larger individual — the nation. 
The creation and the satisfaction of desire are the motives 
of art. They are also the motives of life. 

In history, it is the intangible value, the unconscious pur- 
pose, the desire to realize empires that are only in part ma- 
terial, the desire for glory and prestige and opportunity that 
seem to be the guiding motives. There is a general and 
plastic purpose beneath all the special tendencies and desires 
directing interest toward specific objects, and also some- 
times making the objectives sought indefinite and the pur- 
poses in seeking them seem mystical. It is the desire to be 
a power in the world, or rather to have power over the 
world, and to experience all the inner exaltation these de- 
sires inspire that appears to be the creative force in history. 
These things, moreover, are not the desires and impulses of 
the geniuses among nations alone ; they seem to be inherent 
in all national life. 

Study of the intoxication motive in the individual and 
as a social phenomenon shows that it is not an expression 



32 The Psychology of Nations 

of the need of relaxation from strain, or a reversion, or 
something that occurs by a mere release of primitive in- 
stincts. It occurs in the great periods of history, and in 
the strong years of the life of the individual, rather than in 
times of weakness. It is always a spirit of the times rather 
than of some past reverted to. It may occur in times of 
disorder or of repression, but it is an experience in which 
energy and power are expressed. We see it most dominant 
when life is most abundant, when there is also a craving to 
make life more abundant still, when there is already power 
and more power is longed for. It is true, however, that 
two opposite conditions may produce the strongest mani- 
festations of this intoxication motive. Something analo- 
gous to these conditions we see in the lives of individuals, in 
the phenomena of intemperance, which belong in general to 
the virile years. Social ecstasy is produced in times when 
there is already a free expression of energy, but also under 
conditions that cause pain, disorder and repression. Under 
the latter conditions we think of it not as desire for relief 
from strain but desire to be released from obstacles that im- 
pede the expression of the growth force. If all this be 
true, we see war in a somewhat different light from that in 
which it is ordinarily regarded. It is not, in its typical 
forms, a reversion to barbarism, and it is not a political 
mishap. It is rather a readjustment of tendencies or forces 
and an expression and product of the living and progressive 
forces of society — not necessarily a good or even a normal 
expression of them, but an awakening and a realization of 
such desires as are to-day at work in everything we do — 
forces which for the moment are raised to a white heat, so 
to speak, in which purposes are for the moment fused and 
it may be confused — but still an expression of what, for 
better or for worse we are, not of what in some remote past 
time we were. We cannot explain war or excuse ourselves 
for waging wars by saying that we lapse for a time into 
barbarism, but on the other hand the heroism we suddenly 



Unconscious Motives 33 

find in ourselves as nations or as individuals, is not so dif- 
ferent from that of ordinary life as we may have supposed. 
We have perhaps no right to say that all war is thus to be 
characterized. War is a very complex and a widely vari- 
able phenomenon, but this is the explanation of that aspect 
of the motive of history which in general produces war. 
War may have its abnormalities, if we may speak of a worse 
in that which is already bad enough. War may satisfy the 
desperate mind ; it may, on occasion, be a narcotic to cover 
up worse pain, or an evidence of decadence ; or even be what 
those who think of it as a reversion believe. But all these 
aspects of war, if our view be sound, are the eccentricities 
rather than the essence of war. 

The conditions preceding our recent great war will doubt- 
less in the "course of future historical and sociological re- 
search, be minutely scrutinized, in the effort to find the 
causes of the war — factors deeper than and different from 
the political and economic causes and the personal intrigues 
that are now most emphasized. If we believe that the war 
was made in Germany rather than elsewhere, we might look 
there, especially for these psychological factors of war — 
for our intoxication motives and unconscious impulses and 
our causes of reversion, but we should probably not find 
anything different in kind there from what we should dis- 
cover in other great countries. Those who have seen in 
modern industrialism dangers of coming disaster, or who 
now look back upon it as a genuine cause of the war were 
probably not mistaken. Industrialism has been producing 
rapidly, and in an intense form, what we may call the mood 
of the city, and this mood of the city contains all the con- 
ditions and all the emotions that tend to bring to the surface 
the deep-lying motives of the social life that we are trying 
to point out. There are both the joy of the abundant life, 
the craving for new experiences, and the sense of reality, 
and also the disorganization of interests and motives, the 
stress and fatigue and monotony which prepare the mind 



34 The Psychology of Nations 

for culmination in dramatic events. There is, in a word, 
a deep stirring of all the forces that make for progress and 
expansion, and also conditions that disorganize the indi- 
vidual and the social life. Lamprecht (59) of all German 
writers seems to have appreciated this. He has written be- 
fore the war, describing a condition in Germany which he 
says began in the seventies of the preceding century — a 
change of German life in which there is a great increase of 
the activities of the cities, with haste and anxiety, unscrupu- 
lous individual energy, general nervous excitement, a condi- 
tion of neuro-muscular weakness (and he might have added 
as another sign, over-stimulation of the mind by a great 
flood of morbid literature). 

In Lamprecht's opinion, this period of excitement, this 
strong tendency to the enjoyment of excitation in general, 
is a form of socio-psychic dissociation. It is a period of 
relative disorganization, when the individual is subjected 
to a great variety of new experiences, when outside influ- 
ences prevail over the inner impulses of the individual, in 
which the individual is unsettled and there is a tendency to- 
ward pessimism and melancholia. Lamprecht thinks of 
this state as something transitory, and already as he writes 
(in 1905) nearing an end. This state of continuous excite- 
ment, with its shallow pathos of the individual and its con- 
stant and superficial happiness, its worship of the novel and 
the extraordinary, the suggestibility and the receptivity of 
the masses, automatic action of the will and the emotions — - 
all this Lamprecht thinks will pass. It is a stage in the proc- 
ess of a new formation. The very elements of dissociation 
are positively charged, so to speak, and contain creative 
power. A new system of morals, a new philosophy, new 
religion begin to emerge. There is a strong effort to reach 
a new dominant. 

This is Lamprecht's psychological interpretation of re- 
cent German history. This view and the various aspects 
of the condition which Lamprecht describes, the relation of 



Unconscious Motives 35 

the materialism, the pessimism and the melancholy of such 
a time to the optimistic trends and the deep forward move- 
ment need a closer study than we can here give it, but may 
we not see in it the truth that such conditions as these are 
prone to cause wars as a phase of the process of the inner 
adjustment of national life? Wars occur as forms of ex- 
pression of those impulses which appear in the individual 
life in times of rapid growth and relative dissociation as 
outbreaks of intemperance and passion — a culmination, 
according to our view and terminology, of the intoxication 
motive. Industrialism itself is perhaps but one manifesta- 
tion of deep impulses in the life of nations; it is at once an 
intensification and a formalizing of life. Hence perhaps its 
paradoxical appearance as an increase of both joy and dis- 
tress. There is nothing in it that is wholly satisfying. 

Germany, says Lamprecht, was seeking, in this transition 
period, a new dominant, a new religion and a new philoso- 
phy. But Germany, let us help Lamprecht to say, since he 
does not himself draw this conclusion, has failed to emerge 
upon the level of an exalted ecstasy, failed to produce the 
philosophical, the moral and religious fruit of its new im- 
pulses, failed, in a word, to find its dominant on a high level, 
precisely as often the promising individual fails and has ex- 
pressed his truly great nature in low forms of activity. So 
Germany, and the world, dominated by industrialism and all 
the desires and forces that the rapid development of indus- 
trialism has brought into action, has come to a culmination 
of its efforts in an outbreak unparalleled in history. On 
the side of Germany we see a nation governed by a mood 
of war in which the chief modes of thought and action rep- 
resented are the pseudo-mystical and religious longings for 
new empire, romantic love of the past, militarism, and all 
the motives of the new industrialism and the new science. 
The best motives of the old feudalism and the new indus- 
trialism tried to unite, as we might say, into a new and very 
great civilization — and they failed. What has happened 



36 The Psychology of Nations 

is that the material powers and the cynical moods of indus- 
trialism have combined with the mystical elements and the 
superficial aestheticism of the old feudalistic regime to create 
a philosophy of life, a temporary stage it may be, in which 
force and fanaticism and the uncompromising ideals of na- 
tional honor and brute strength prevail over those of a 
wider efficiency and a broader devotion which might have 
inspired a greater and a better Germany. Convention and 
political motives have done the rest. 

Bergson says that in the war spirit of Germany one sees 
matter arrayed against spirit. One can see some truth in 
this, but spirit and matter are not two armies pitted against 
one another. In Germany, as we may believe elsewhere, the 
spiritual in the sense of creative forces in the subconscious 
life of nations does try to organize the practical life, with 
its routine and convention, into an onward moving prog- 
ress, in which, necessarily, exalted moods (if energies are 
to get themselves expressed at all) must prevail, and must 
be full of possibilities, both of great good and of great evil. 
Life in its collective form will be abundant, because that 
is its most fundamental craving. It may be terribly and 
destructively abundant, or benignly, but progress, as his- 
tory seems to show us — if reason and psychology do not 
— can never be orderly and complacent. Order and con- 
vention must break down to introduce new spirit and new 
desires which are continually being created in the inner life. 
These forces may be old instincts which are continually up- 
setting civilized life, but the desires they produce and the 
mechanism of their operation seem to be different from 
what our customary psychology and interpretation of his- 
tory imply. Just as these moods make the child play and 
be wholly unpractical when one might suppose he could be 
useful, and the individual, as man, live a certain life of ad- 
venture rather than in security and routine, so this spirit 
or mood that dominates nations makes them imperialistic, 
and causes them to crave those things which lead toward 



Unconscious Motives 37 

war, if they do not crave war itself, when we might think 
they ought to be most concerned about the economic wel- 
fare of the world as a whole. 

. Whether this spirit of nations be an evil to be overcome, 
and to suppress, or an untamed force to direct to right ob- 
jects, or a good that by some logic of events which we do 
not understand works out the right course of history, we 
do not know. But here, of course, we come to problems, 
which, if they are problems at all in any real sense, are 
philosophical and ultimate. 



CHAPTER III 

INSTINCTS IN WAR: FEAR, HATE, THE AGGRESSIVE IMPULSE, 
MOTIVES OF COMBAT AND DESTRUCTION, THE SOCIAL 
INSTINCT 

We have found that the essential, and we might say, pri- 
mary psychological datum of war is a war-mood, that the 
central motive of this war-mood is a general impulse which 
we called the intoxication motive, and that this intoxication 
motive, considered generically, and in regard to its specific 
meaning is a craving for power and for the experience of 
exerting and feeling power. The war-mood is not a mere 
collection of instincts ; it is a new product, in which instincts 
and emotions have a place. There are several reasons, 
practical and theoretical, for regarding it as a highly im- 
portant problem to discover what the actual content of this 
war-mood is. This mood, being one of the greatest of all 
powers of good and evil, and one most in need to-day of 
education and re-direction, it may be, it will probably be 
controlled, if ever, upon the basis of a knowledge of what 
it means as a whole, and of what its elements are which ap- 
pear in the form of fused, transformed, truncated, general- 
ized and aborted instincts and feelings. 

Primitive Tendencies 

First of all, the highly complex emotions, moods and 
impulses we find in the social consciousness as expressed 
in the moods of war, do contain and revert to instincts and 
feelings that are part of the primitive equipment of organic 
life, and are usually identified as nutritional and reproduc- 

38 



Instincts in War 39 

tive tendencies. The part played in war by the migratory 
impulse, the predatory impulse and the like indicates the 
connection of the war-moods with the nutritional tendencies ; 
and the display elements found already in primitive war- 
fare and, as we have already inferred, in all forms of 
ecstasy contain factors that are at bottom sexual. We no 
longer eat our enemies, and we do not bring home their 
heads to our women or practice wife stealing, but it is 
easy to observe the remnants of these old feelings and in- 
stincts in war. Trophy hunting continues, and we may 
suppose that even the moods of primitive cannibalism have 
not entirely been lost. The ready habituation of soldiers 
to some of the scenes of the recent war seems to suggest 
a lingering trace of this motive, while the looting impulse 
which plays such a part in war, and some aspects of the de- 
structive impulses and the like that are displayed, are, with 
a high degree of probability, closely related to instincts that 
were once specifically practical and belong to the funda- 
mental nutritional motives. Nor is it a mere euphemism, 
perhaps, when we speak of the greed of nations, nor solely 
analogical when we compare the ambitions of peoples with 
certain adolescent phenomena in the life of the individual. 
Plainly the social consciousness, as a collective mood, does 
not command the specific reactions connected with sexuality 
and nutrition, but we may observe the presence of these 
instinctive reactions in two phases of war. We see them 
in the tendencies of various individuals, who under the 
excitements of the war moods are controlled more or less 
specifically by instinctive reactions. We see also frag- 
ments of instinctive reactions and primitive feeling woven 
into the total states of social consciousness. The hunger 
motive may, and probably does, supply some of the ele- 
ments of the fear and the aggressive moods of war; just 
as the sex motive provides some of the elements of anger 
and hatred, and some of the qualities of combat itself. 



40 The Psychology of Nations 

The Aggressive Instinct 

A natural, but somewhat naive explanation of war is 
that it is a survival of the aggressive instinct that man has 
brought up with him from animal life, in which he orig- 
inated, and that very early in his career was directed to- 
ward his fellow men. This aggressive instinct as expressed 
in the modern spirit of war does not need, on this view, 
to be thought of as something reverted to. It is still ac- 
tive throughout the social life. Both the purposes and the 
methods of it remain. We have referred to one aspect 
of this before, and to the objection that can be made that 
the ancestry of man does not show us such an aggressive 
instinct. The nearest relatives of man are mainly social 
rather than aggressive in their habits. Even the habits of 
hunting other animals and eating animal food appear to 
have been acquired during man's career as man, and he 
never has had the aggressive temper that some creatures 
have had. Man has acquired a very effectual and very com- 
plex adjustment to his environment by piecing together, so 
to speak, fragments of his original conduct, and developing 
mechanisms that have been produced in the race as a means 
of satisfying fundamental needs. Modes of reaction pro- 
duced originally for one purpose have apparently been 
utilized by other motives. Of course the more specific ani- 
mal instincts are not wholly lacking, but it is also true that 
man through his social life has produced habits that re- 
semble or are substitutes for primitive instincts. The love 
of combat, especially as it is shown in play indicates the 
presence of instinctive roots, but it does not show the ex- 
istence of a definite instinct of aggression. This play is in 
part an off-shoot of the reproductive motive. These fight- 
ing plays of children are in part sexual plays, and we see 
them clearly in their true light in some of the higher 
mammals most closely related to man. 



Instincts in War 41 

One aspect of the aggressive habit of man has been 
too much neglected. It is highly probable that aggression 
in man has been far more closely related to the emotion of 
fear than to any assumed predatory instinct. It is a 
question whether the predatory habit of man, ending in can- 
nibalism and the hunting of animals for food, did not orig- 
inate in the time of the long battle man must have had with 
animals in which the animals themselves for the most part 
played the part of aggressors. It was not for nothing, at 
any rate, that our animal ancestors took to the trees, and it is 
certain that the fear element in human nature is very strong 
and very deeply ingrained. We see throughout animal life 
fear expressed by aggressive movements, by the show of 
anger, as well as by flight. This is seen especially clearly 
in the birds. With all their equipment for the defensive 
strategy of flight they express fear instinctively by attack- 
ing, and this is apparently not a result merely of the habit of 
defending the young. The great carnivora also attack 
from fear, and seem normally never to attack such animals 
as they do not hunt for prey unless they are frightened. 
The charge of the rhinoceros and other great ungulates is 
probably always a fear reaction. They appear to have no 
other aggressive impulses, certainly none connected with the 
nutritional motives since they are herbivorous in habit. 

The fear motive is probably much deeper in human na- 
ture, both in the lower and the higher social reactions than is 
commonly supposed, the concealment of fear being precisely 
a part of the strategy of defense. Fear has created more 
history than it is usually given credit for. The aggressive 
motive alone, in all probability, would never have made 
history such a story of battles as it has been. Nations 
usually attribute more aggressive intentions and motives to 
their neighbors than their neighbors possess, and war is 
certainly often precipitated by an accumulation of mutual 
distrust and suspicion. Nations are always watching one 



42 The Psychology of Nations 

another for the least signs of aggression on the part of their 
supposed enemies, an attitude which of course is inspired 
only by apprehension. 

Moods of fear and pessimism we say are deeply im- 
planted in the consciousness of man, and we must interpret 
both his optimism, and all its expressions in philosophy and 
in religion, and also his aggressive behavior as in large 
part the result of a conscious or an unconscious effort to 
overcome his fear. The social consciousness is full of 
marks of age-long dread and suspicion. Fear of fate, fear 
of losing identity as a nation, fear of being overrun by an 
enemy, fear of internal disruption, are strong motives in 
national life. Fear runs like a dark thread through all the 
life of nations, and gives to it a quality of mysticism, and a 
touch of sadness which is so characteristic of much of the 
deepest patriotism of the world. 

Fear is one of the most powerful motives of all aggres- 
sive warfare in the world. We find it in every nation, even 
those which are naturally most aggressive, and in them 
perhaps most of all. In the history and in the war moods 
of Germany the fear motive is unmistakable. America is 
not without it. Nations conceal their fears, presenting a 
bold front to the foreigner ; but beneath the display one can 
always detect suspicion, dread and intense watchfulness. 
America has in the past feared Germany, and America fears 
the Far East ; we look furtively toward Asia, the primeval 
home of all evils and pestilence, for something that may 
arise and engulf us. Small countries fear; large countries 
with their sense of distances, have their own characteristic 
forms of apprehension. Fear is the motive of preventive 
wars. It makes all nations desire to kill their enemies 
in the egg. It creates the death wish toward all who thwart 
our interests or who may in the future do so. 

This fear motive runs through all history. Parsons says 
that men fight not because they are warlike, but because 
they are fearful. Rohrbach thinks that if Germany and 



Instincts in War 43 

England could each be sure the other would not be aggres- 
sive there would be no war between them. It is this aspect 
of the foreign as the unknown that especially plays upon 
the motive of fear. This fear is like the child's dread of 
the dark ; it is not what is seen, but what is not seen that 
causes apprehension. It is the stranger whose psychic na- 
ture we cannot penetrate, who causes fear. In small coun- 
tries having only land borders, this attitude of suspicion and 
fear must become an integral part of the whole psychic 
structure of the national consciousness. Fear becomes mor- 
bid; nations have illusions and delusions based upon fear. 
There are reasons for believing that all aggression contains 
a pessimistic motive, or background, and that this pessimistic- 
background is based upon the emotion of fear. Countries 
that are most positively aggressive have such a pessimistic 
strain. Pessimism is a shadow that lies across the path of 
progress of modern Germany. This fear motive, the qual- 
ity of the animal that charges when at bay, is to be seen 
throughout all German history. Germany's fear of Russia 
must certainly be blamed for a great part of the pessimistic 
strain in the temperament of Germany, and therefore as an 
important factor among the causes of the great war. Every 
war appears to the people who conduct it as defensive, pre- 
cisely because every war is to some extent based upon fear, 
and fear in national consciousness is a persistent sense of 
living by a defensive strategy. It is existence that nations 
always think and talk of fighting for; it is existence about 
which they have apprehensions. Beneath all group life 
there is this sense of fear, since fear itself was a large factor 
in creating that life. When people live together, repress in- 
dividual desires and participate in a common life we may 
know that one of the strongest bonds of this social life is 
fear. The need of defense is a more fundamental motive 
in national life than is aggression. A " shudder runs 
through a nation about to go to battle." The lusts of war 
are aroused later by the overcoming of fear. 



44 The Psychology of Nations 

Germany's inclination to preventive wars, her incessant 
plea of being about to be attacked, can by no means be in- 
terpreted as pure deception, or as an effort to make political 
capital. Germany's army was primarily for defense, be- 
cause a defensive strategy is the only strategy that Germany 
with her position and her temperament can adopt. Ger- 
many's great army was Germany's compensation, in con- 
sciousness, for the insignificance of her territory. It was 
for defense. It was also a compensation for a feeling of 
inferiority, in Adler's sense. Fanaticism, envy, deprecia- 
tion of others, aggression, morbid and excessive ambition 
were all fruits from the same stem. The gloom which 
many have found in German life, and the pessimism in Ger- 
man philosophy, we may explain in part by the experi- 
ences of Germany as the scene of so many devastating wars. 
Upon the background of fear, in our interpretation of ag- 
gressive motives, is erected German autocracy, German am- 
bition and the conception of the absolute State, which may 
be interpreted as almost a specific fear reaction. It comes 
in time to have other meanings, and like many instinctive 
reactions, it may be put to uses for which it was not or- 
iginally produced, but there is fear concealed in the heart 
of it. How action can be both defensive and strongly ag- 
gressive, then, is no mystery if we see that aggression may 
be a fear reaction, that even the most ardent imperialism is 
based in part upon fear, upon the consciousness at some 
time of being weak and inferior. 

Fear and suspicion cause aggressive wars even when the 
fear may be, in all reason, groundless. There is no more 
dangerous individual in the community than the one hav- 
ing delusions of persecution, for his mania is naturally homi- 
cidal. So with nations. Fear is a treacherous and de- 
ceptive passion. We may see this fear, if we choose to 
look for it, even in the ecstatic mood of war and the 
spiritual exaltation of Germany during the first few weeks 
or months of the war. This exaltation was in part a re- 



Instincts in War 45 

action of fear — or a reaction from fear. Germany was 
afraid, feared for her existence, and the exaltation was in 
part a sense of taking a terrible plunge into the depths of 
fate. Germany was afraid of Russia and afraid of Eng- 
land, and that fear had to be overcome, because the pres- 
ence of the fear itself was a matter of life or death. 
But the exaltation did not merely succeed the fear. It 
contained it. And why should Germany, even with all 
her preparedness and her resources not be afraid? An in- 
herited fear is not so easily exorcised. Germany arrayed 
against all Russia and all the British Empire, Germany no 
larger than our Texas experienced a state of exaltation, 
overcoming fear. But it required something more than 
courage to overcome the fear; and that other element was 
mysticism. To the sense of throwing all into the hands 
of fate which, by all physical signs must be adverse, was 
added, as a compensating element, Germany's mystical be- 
lief in her security as a chosen nation. Fear, by its in- 
tensity and depth may, like physical pain, become ecstatic 
and thus be overcome. 

Hatred 

Hatred must be considered both as a cause of war, and 
as an element in the war moods. Many authors have called 
hatred one of the deepest roots of war. This hatred be- 
tween nations even Freud says is mysterious. But Pfister, 
referring to Adler's theory, says that war must be under- 
stood precisely as we understand enmity among individuals. 
A sense of inferiority is insulted, and thus aggressive feel- 
ings are aroused. The nation, like the individual, is 
spurred on to make good its claim to greatness. It is a 
feeling of jealousy based upon a sense of inferiority that 
causes hatred. O'Ryan and Anderson (5), military writ- 
ers, say there are two causes of war : those based upon an 
assumed necessity, and those based upon hatred. Nus- 
baum (86) also finds two causes of war, the expansion im- 



4-6 The Psychology of Nations 

pulse and the egoism of species, which leads to long en- 
mities. 

History shows that we must accept hatred as an under- 
lying cause of war. The reaction of deep anger which may 
he aroused by a variety of situations that arise among na- 
tions, especially when it is, so to speak, an outbreak 
of a long continued hatred, is a proximate cause of wars. 
Hatred, the reaction of anger prolonged into a mood, differs 
as national or group emotion from the anger of the in- 
dividual in part by being subject strongly to group sug- 
gestion, and in part because in the group consciousness there 
is only rarely a means of expression, on the part of the in- 
dividuals of the group, of the feelings of hatred. Enemies 
are far away and inaccessible. Therefore hatred may be- 
come deep and chronic. 

Hatred between nations is usually based upon a long 
series of reprisals and a history of invasions. These inva- 
sions are primarily physical invasions, but later invasions 
in the sphere of invisible values, offenses to honor and the 
like are added. These ideal values come to be regarded as 
more vital than material values. Hatred between groups 
becomes chronic and often seems to be groundless because 
the values concerned have thus become intangible. The 
chronic moods of hatred and dislike become explosive forces, 
ready to be excited to action whenever any difference arises. 
Veblen (97) says wars never occur except when questions 
of honor are involved, which is of course equivalent to 
saying that the reaction of anger is always required as 
an immediate cause of war. Veblen maintains also that 
emulation is always involved in the patriotic spirit, that 
patriotism always contains the idea of the defeat of an 
opponent, and is based upon collective malevolence. The 
range of these occasions of crisis is so great, and the feel- 
ings of hatred so persistent and volatile, that the mechanism 
for the production of war is always present. These causes 
range all the way from violation of property to offense to 



Instincts in War 47 

the most abstract ideas of national etiquette. Violation 
of international law, of moral principles, we see now, may 
have very far-reaching effects as infringing the sphere of 
honor of nations not directly concerned, since the prestige 
of all nations as participants in creating law and becoming 
upholders of it is affected. 

If hatred and its crises are causes of war, they do not 
fit into the moods in which warfare is generally conducted. 
Hatred belongs to the periods of peace and of strained rela- 
tions, when the cause of war is present, but the means of 
retaliation are not at hand or not in action. The prevalence 
and persistence of hatred in war is a sign of imperfect 
morale. Hatred cannot remain in the war mood of a na- 
tion acting with full confidence in its powers. Hatred al- 
ways implies inferiority or impotent superiority. Dide 
(20) says that the spirit of hatred does not fit into the sol- 
dier's life. It goes with the desire for revenge and is 
strongest among those who stay at home and can do noth- 
ing. Hatred is a phase of apprehension. Hatred is a prod- 
uct of the fear that cannot be taken up into the optimistic 
moods, and thus be transformed. It remains as a foreign 
body and an inhibition. It arises when obstacles appear to 
be too great, when there are reverses, and the enemy shows 
signs of being able to maintain a long and stubborn resist- 
ance, or flaunts again the original cause of the disagreement. 
Scheler (77) says that revenge, which is a form of hate, 
is not a justifiable war motive. We should say also that 
it is not a normal war mood, that it has no sustaining force, 
but causes a rapid expenditure of energy which may be ef- 
fectual in brief actions, but is even there wasteful and in- 
terferes with judgment and efficiency. Morale based upon 
hatred is insecure. 

Hatred must have been a very early factor in the rela- 
tions of groups to one another, and presumably we should 
need to go back to animal life and study antipathies there 
in order fully to understand the nature of racial and national 



48 The Psychology of Nations 

antagonisms, some of which may be based upon physiolog- 
ical traits and primitive aesthetic qualities. The very fact 
of the existence of groups, segregated and well bound to- 
gether for the purposes of offense and defense implies al- 
ready a strong contrast of feeling between that of in- 
dividuals of the group toward one another and that directed 
toward the outsider. This contrast developed not merely 
as a reaction, but as a necessity, for groups in the beginning 
must have had to contend against their own feeble social 
cohesion, and existed only by reason of strong emotions of 
fear and anger felt toward the stranger. Hatred toward 
all outside the group must at one stage have been highly use- 
ful as a means of cementing the bonds of the group and 
maintaining the necessary attitude of defense, at a time 
when all outsiders were likely to be dangerous. Feelings of 
friendliness toward strangers were dangerous to the life 
of the group, and so hatred possessed survival value. 

The main root of group antipathy is in all probability 
fear. Hatred is an aspect of the aggressive defensive to- 
ward the stranger. Hatred is a part of the aggressive re- 
action. As an expression of ferocity toward all who 
are not known to be friendly, it belongs to the first line 
of defense. Hatred is likely to be strong in the female 
because the attitude of the female is universally defensive. 

In the beginning, as MacCurdy (37) says, the contrasts 
between groups were sharp, and these definitely separated 
groups must have felt toward one another not only antagon- 
ism but a sense of being different in kind. Intensity of 
feelings of opposition tends to magnify small differences 
into specific differences. This sense of specific difference 
is never lost, not even in the consciousness of enlightened 
nations in regard to one another, and we may see it to- 
day displayed as a mystic belief, on the part of many 
peoples, in their own superiority. Nations are always out- 
siders to one another, and the sense of strangeness peren- 
nially sustains defensive attitudes and moods of hatred. 



Instincts in War 49 

The friendship of nations can never be very secure, be- 
cause the old idea of difference of kind is never quite aban- 
doned. Some degree of enmity seems always to be felt 
toward the foreigner ; that is, toward all who are not inter- 
ested in the protective functions of the group. MacCurdy 
thinks the intensity of suspicion and hatred of peoples to- 
ward one another belongs to the pathological field, and 
that one expression of this is the peculiarity of the mental 
processes by which nations always justify their own cause in 
war. This, however, is perhaps an exaggeration, since we 
can trace these states of mind in all the history of the 
race. 

How deep-seated the enmities and the sense of strange- 
ness among nations may be is seen in the fact that national 
groups living in close proximity to one another tend to 
become less friendly rather than to become affiliated. These 
feelings gradually produce conceptual entities, which stand 
for the reality of the foreign. These concepts are de- 
posits, so to speak, from a great number of affective re- 
actions, and they always contain imaginative content based 
upon enmity and suspicion. This underlying enmity be- 
tween neighboring peoples is not something rare in the 
world. All foreigners, even in the minds of the most 
intelligent of peoples, are reconstructions, caricatures. 
These feelings and attitudes are strong and deep and they 
prevent genuine friendship among nations. We tend to 
think of all foreigners as in some degree malicious, as de- 
signing, and lacking in the good qualities and right habits 
which we ourselves possess. 

Many authors have commented upon the entire inabil- 
ity of nations to understand one another. There is a deep 
reason for this, which we have already suggested. They 
do not wish to understand one another. It is a part of 
the archaic system of defense to maintain an attitude of 
distrust and misunderstanding and even fear. The fear of 
the enemy is a protection — against invasion from without 



5<d The Psychology of Nations 

and disruption within. Nations do not dare to relinquish 
their fear of one another, and we see something of this 
voluntary cherishing of fear and enmity in the present 
hesitation about entering into leagues on the part of many 
nations. Nations really wish to hate one another, it would 
seem. Other evidence of this we have observed in the cult 
of hate that has been promulgated to keep up morale in the 
recent war. We see enmity maintained when the differ- 
ences among the peoples holding it are superficial and must 
indeed be exaggerated and caricatured in order to make them 
support feelings of dislike. Small differences in the cus- 
toms of closely related peoples are sufficient sometimes to 
maintain intense antagonism. As Collier (68) says, it is 
precisely the bad manners of a people that cause conflict. 
These bad manners are of course manners that are different 
from our own. 

Germany's outburst of hatred and its frequent exhibition 
during the war and its promulgation as a cult and a re- 
ligion appear to have excited the interest of many writers 
on the war. As a chapter in the psychology of war it has 
suggested new problems and points of view, and it has also 
appealed to many as an interesting problem of national 
psychology. If our explanation of hatred as especially 
related to fear and to the sense of inferiority is correct 
Germany of all nations must have been affected with a 
disorder of morale, or some perversion of national con- 
sciousness. 

The hatred of Germany for England is not the only 
example of international enmity in the world, but its ex- 
pression in the war has made it peculiarly interesting. The 
grievance against England is first of all that England is 
great and prosperous, and lives in comfort upon the un- 
earned fruits of empire, while the German has toiled hard 
through the centuries and has caught nothing. England 
is hated because in many ways she has stood squarely in 
the path of Germany's progress and because in the history 



Instincts in War 51 

of European diplomacy, doors leading to wider empire 
have been again and again slammed in Germany's face, 
usually by the hand of England. Germany hates England, 
according to German writers, because England, a kindred 
race, tried to betray western civilization into the hands of 
barbarism. Germany hates England because, to the Ger- 
man mind, England is hypocritical. The Englishman criti- 
cizes in others precisely what he does himself; Puritanical 
talk covers a sinful heart. Germany hates England because 
in her sea-policy England has been high handed and arro- 
gant. The Germans often call England a robber nation, 
with the morals of a burglar who, having enriched himself 
by his trade, and having retired from business, now preaches 
honesty. 

It is not merely the hatred of England on the part of 
Germany that is of interest for a psychology of war but 
the fact that Germany has taken her hate for England with 
a peculiar seriousness, believed it unique, has been to the 
pains of justifying it morally, has covered it with religious 
exaltation, made it a cult and even expressed it in a formula, 
and made it an educational program. There are many Ger- 
man writings justifying the hatred of England and encour- 
aging hate as a weapon of righteousness. Smith (47) (64) 
has given us the titles of forty-four German publications 
in his own possession, having for subject Germany's hatred 
of England, and says that there are sixty-five more known 
to him. Some of these expressions of hatred are extreme. 
There is, or was, a pastor in Hamburg who declared from 
his pulpit that his people were doing God a service in hating 
England and in taking every step possible to wipe so pes- 
tiferous a nation from the face of the earth. Frau Reuter 
says that it is impossible now more than ever to love our 
enemies, that England who professed love for Germany and 
then betrayed her love must be hated. Stern, in his studies 
of hate in children found that hate may be strong without 
any clear content, in the minds of German children. That 



52 The Psychology of Nations 

some of this hatred of England is a direct effect of the teach- 
ings of Treitschke can hardly be doubted, when we recall 
the great influence his teachings have had, and the peculiar 
bitterness of that dramatic personage for England, for 
England's pretentiousness, her middle class satisfaction, her 
insular conceit. 

The further details of the cult of hatred in Germany 
need not detain us, since the purpose is only to suggest 
here the connection of hatred with the national pessimism, 
the fear and the inferiority motive of Germany. We see a 
similar attitude in Austria, where there is a violent race 
hatred toward the Serbians, which Le Bon has regarded 
as the motive from which Austria went to war. Ferrero 
comments upon the fact that hatred is conspicuously absent 
in America, and says that the greater hatred in Europe is 
due not only to the obvious result of nations being crowded 
together, but also to the caste system which limits the free- 
dom of the individual and tends to engender deep passions. 
Dide (20) says that in Germany preoccupation with the idea 
of injustice is a cause of war, and Chapman (39) also 
remarks that Germany had gone mad thinking of her 
wrongs. That jealousy and fear are in general the sub- 
stratum of national hatred is deeply impressed upon one 
in studying the psychology of Germany. All the hate 
motive of the late war might well be found in Germany's 
prayer " Gott strafe England." Germany appealed to God 
to punish England, of course, because Germany herself could 
not. Both the appeal and the hatred are reactions of fear 
and a sense of impotence. Germany hated England because 
England was secure behind her navy, upon her island, be- 
yond the reach of the war machine which is Germany's 
symbol of power and the compensation for her sense of 
inferiority and weakness. 



Instincts in War 53 

The Instinct of Combat 

We may distinguish in the motives of war between the 
aggressive tendency, which we have already discussed as a 
reaction of fear or of anger, and a more specific instinct of 
combat as a possession of the individual, less subject to 
suggestion, less closely related to the phenomena of the 
herd. The aggressive reaction we associate, or some writ- 
ers do associate it, with the predatory instinct, practical in its 
motive, having in part an economic basis. The love of 
combat which appears especially as a play motive in the 
child and the youth is expressed as a desire for conquest 
and in the pleasure of overcoming an enemy. 

Some see in war a recrudescence of the instinct of com- 
bat, and indeed think of war as mainly such a return to 
primitive instinct. The life of peace represses this motive 
too much, they think. Life is too organized and co- 
operative and the individual craves release from it. The 
general objections to such an interpretation of war we 
have already stated. We think rather of certain specific 
movements as avenues of approach to highly complex states 
of ecstasy, and of these states of ecstasy as representing or 
containing the real craving for war, so far as there is 
one. The war mood exploits these movements and gives 
room for instincts to display themselves, and these instincts, 
in their expression, are pleasure-toned because they are 
archaic and have once been well organized and habitual 
forms of activity having practical objects. But to say that 
men have a profound but concealed desire to kill one an- 
other, that the fighting impulse remains intact in some 
original animal form, is a travesty upon human nature. 
It is precisely because in war killing is depersonalized, so 
to speak, that it is a moral duty and is performed under 
conditions in which there is a summation of many strong 
motives leading to the act that, as we see it, men find 
joy in battle. The instinct of attack, or the hunting in- 



54 The Psychology of Nations 

stinct that is involved in this activity, can become pleasure- 
toned only because of the presence of other motives, and 
because the object is dehumanized for the time. Otherwise 
we should expect all soldiers, once having their aggressive 
instincts aroused in battle, to become dangerous to the com- 
munity. 

That there is, however, a residue of pure love of physical 
combat and a survival of the instinctive movements of 
combat is shown in play, although here too the motives 
are mixed. The desire to fight, to kill, to hunt are still 
present but for the most part are sublimated in adult life 
into desire for competition in general, love of danger, and 
the hunting and gambling impulse. But we can here and 
there in human conduct see certain roots of pure instincts 
having definite coordinated reactions. These undoubtedly 
do play a part, but probably a very small part in the present 
moods of war. So far as they remain purely instinctive 
their place as a general motive of war seems negligible. It 
is a question, in fact, whether even in the state of savagery 
any pure instinct for killing ever played a considerable part. 
There were already practical motives, motives of fear and 
anger, and presumably also complex states of pleasure con- 
nected with beliefs, customs and ceremonies as well as with 
battle, so that even then men cannot be said to have acted 
upon anything like purely instinctive impulses. 

Numerous accounts have come from the scenes of the 
great war about men who appear for a time to be domi- 
nated by irresistible instincts. Gibbs (80) says there are 
some men in every army who like slaughter for its own 
sake. They find an intoxication in it. They love the hunt- 
ing spirit of it all. We have the story of a French soldier 
of peaceable disposition who appeared to experience an 
ecstasy of delight as he lay concealed in a shell hole and 
was able to pick off many of the enemy. This was not the 
exhilaration and abandon experienced by men while making 
attack, when violent muscular exertion produces an intoxica- 



Instincts in War 55 

tion of mind, but a dominance of the mind by something 
which seems very much like the hunting spirit, under cir- 
cumstances in which, we may suppose, the enemy had un- 
dergone some process of dehumanization in the mind of 
the hunter. We may suppose also that there are individ- 
uals in every army who have pathological impulses or per- 
versions, which show themselves in instinctive reactions 
of a specific nature and in excess of the normal. 

Both the Germans and the French are accused by French 
and German writers respectively with being the real lovers 
of battle. German writers say that the Germans are pecu- 
liarly peace-loving and by nature lacking in the battle spirit, 
but that the French love battle for its own sake, and that 
this is shown clearly by their history. Others see love 
of conflict, aggressiveness and cruelty in the German dis- 
position. Boutroux (13) wishes to place among the causes 
of the great war the native brutality of the German disposi- 
tion, a trait existing from long ago, and now become a dis- 
ciplined cruelty — a zuchtmaessige Grausamkcit, regarded 
as right and meritorious. Many think they find this love 
of fighting, bloodthirst and love of destruction in the Ger- 
man soul. Many attribute pure aggressiveness of a pro- 
nounced type or an exaggerated predatory instinct to the 
Germans. Chapman (39) says that the war is a flaming 
forth of passions that have covertly been burning in the 
soul of Germany for several decades. He adds that with 
the Germans war is instinctive ; there is no casus belli at 
all. War is for war's sake, and is a need of nature with 
the German. Smith (64) declares that the German is in- 
nately brutal, and as one proof of this he shows the sta- 
tistics of brutal crimes in Germany. He writes of the 
truculent aggressiveness of the Teutonic race, of the hatred 
and love of destruction displayed by the robber knights of 
the Middle Ages, and regards quarrelsome aggressiveness as 
innate in German character. Dide (20) thinks that such 
aggressive warfare as is practiced by the Germans always 



56 The Psychology of Nations 

goes with a pessimistic disposition. Thayer (58) con- 
nects bloodthirstiness with the paganism of Germany, and 
says that bloodthirstiness crops out again and again in 
German history. Nicolai (79) also refers to the craving 
for blood in the German character, and says that it has 
been shown throughout the history of the Germans. The 
old sacrifices which grew out of cannibalism and are due 
to the persistence of the craving for blood show an in- 
stinctive desire for slaughter, or at least a confirmed habit 
of killing that dies hard. But in all these characterizations 
of national temperament there is no clear distinction among 
various motives of conduct. Anger and fear reactions, 
love of combat itself, the motives of display are all inter- 
mingled. 

There can of course be no precise way of estimating 
the place of a pure instinct of combat among the causes 
of war, or in the war moods. We have seen reason for be- 
lieving that although these instincts remain as fragments in 
the individual and especially are utilized in higher processes 
of the social life, they are less influential in determining 
motives and conduct than is sometimes believed. We can- 
not at least explain war as a sudden release of these in- 
stincts. That primitive passions for violence, as Mac- 
Curdy (Z7) maintains, reenforce the herd antagonism, and 
in the midst of the apprehension at the threat of war, 
give rise to a desire for war, may be true, but such primi- 
tive passions are not all of the forces that are at work 
in causing modern wars. To say that in the individual of 
modern society a savage still lives is an exaggeration, and 
does not properly express what social consciousness is or 
has done. The social life is not a balance in which primi- 
tive instincts are held in leash by other instincts or feelings, 
but a new product in which there is a synthesis of impulses 
in which the original form of the impulses may be greatly 
transformed. We live in composite situations to which 
there correspond composite moods. Often motives which 



Instincts in War 57 

clearly reveal to analysis their instinctive character have 
no tendency to express themselves in the definite instinctive 
movements corresponding to this instinct-feeling, having 
permanently become dissociated from the primitive re- 
actions, either by a process of generalization and fusion 
of states and processes in the individual, or by the inherit- 
ance of structural changes. There are, it is true, all de- 
grees of amalgamation of old and new elements or of trans- 
formation of old elements, but to think of instincts as re- 
maining intact and unchanged in modern life seems wholly 
wrong. 

After all man is no longer an animal, and even the 
distance between man as a member of the present com- 
plex organized society and man as primitive or savage is 
considerable. The difference is not entirely in the associa- 
tions themselves but in all that the associations have done, 
or that they represent, in modifying instincts, which no 
longer exist in their original form and distinctness. Man 
is a creature of feeling, but not of instinct we say, and 
this distinction is important in many ways. All analogies 
between animal and human life have an element of danger 
in them. To explain human conduct in terms of herd in- 
stincts — instincts of aggression and the like — is mis- 
leading, since the instincts that are assumed do not exist 
as such, and perhaps never did. The psychology of the 
crowd, and the psychology of war, cannot be contained in 
the psychology of the herd, however attractive the sim- 
plicity of these concepts may be. That primitive instincts 
may remain as remnants, that the crowd shows some of 
the characteristics of the herd and the pack cannot be de- 
nied, and that in the spirit of war these fragments and 
traits play a certain part may well be believed. But the 
synthetic and highly complex mood we call the war spirit, 
and the causes of war, however archaic some of their 
elements may be, are very different from any mere sum of 
instincts. There is no specific craving for combat that 



58 The Psychology of Nations 

we can call a cause of war, or that, in our view, plays 
any considerable part in the causes of war — combat as 
apart from practical motives and the complex moods into 
which, in its modern form, it enters. Some writers ap- 
pear to be deceived because they assume that war is it- 
self primitive, and do not see that in spite of its conven- 
tions and its old forms, it is not far behind civilization, 
not because civilization has made no progress, or is so 
insecure, but because war, chaos though it be, in some 
respects contains all our modern feelings. Kerr says that 
war is due to a superfluity of animal force that must vent 
itself, but such explanations of war seem certainly to be 
very far from the truth. That theory is far from being 
adequate as an explanation of play. It is much less so as 
an explanation of war. The other theory of play that is 
most prevalent and which is offered as a theory of war — 
that play and war are reversions to primitive instincts, is 
also insufficient. War is neither an overflow of energy 
nor a reversion to primitive states. Rather it is caused 
by and involves all the present and active motives of man 
and all his essential human qualities. 

Social Instincts 

Whatever the specific causes of war may be, war is of 
course possible only because there exists a mechanism or 
instinct or feeling, because of which great groups of people 
act as a unit in the common interests of all. We usually 
speak of this collective action as the result of social instincts 
or a general social instinct. It is the place of this " in- 
stinct " in the causes and moods of war that we must con- 
sider. War is a social phenomenon : it is a movement di- 
rected toward an object, but the force that drives the move- 
ment is of course social. 

Several writers, among them MacCurdy (37), Murray 
(90), and Trotter (82), have dealt with this social aspect 



Instincts in War 59 

of war, and have interpreted war as a herd reaction. All 
these theories are simple. Trotter maintains that in man 
there are four instincts and no more : self-preservative, re- 
productive, nutritional, and herd instincts. The peculiarity 
of the herd instinct is that it does not itself have definite 
motor expression, but serves to intensify and direct the 
other instincts. This herd instinct is a tendency, so to 
speak, which can confer instinctive sanction upon any other 
part of the field of action or belief. The herd instinct, for 
example, gives instinctive quality to the social organiza- 
tion and social proclivities of three different types of so- 
ciety, which appear as national characters. These are the 
wolf, the sheep, and the bee types. The aggressive type of 
social organization is represented by the Roman and now 
by the. German civilization. This is a declining type, but it 
was because moral equality could not be tolerated in Ger- 
many that the rulers were obliged to cause Germany to re- 
vert to the primitive aggressive form of gregariousness. 
China would be a good example of Trotter's herd of the 
sheep type, for here the defensive instinct seems to be the 
dominating social reaction. War becomes, in such a herd, 
a great stimulus when, and only when, it is a threat to the 
whole nation, and when, therefore, the individual fears for 
the whole herd rather than for himself. 

The third type is the bee type, well represented by Eng- 
land, although still imperfectly. This is the type toward 
which the world as a whole tends, but as yet there is no 
complete form of it. At present the capacity for individual 
reactions to the same stimulus has far outstripped the capac- 
ity for intercommunication. Intercommunication in the 
biological sense has been allowed to run at haphazard. 
When once a great gregarious unit of this type shall have 
been thoroughly organized, and be subject to conscious di- 
rection as a whole, there will appear in the world a new 
kind of social mechanism and a new biological form. The 
interest in war will give way to a larger and more dramatic 



60 The Psychology of Nations 

field of interest and of conquest than the mere taking and 
re-taking of land. But there is as yet no such society. 
Even in times of a great war, there is an internal differentia- 
tion that cannot be overcome, an individualism that creates 
antagonism, and a type of leadership which is conservative 
and static rather than progressive. 

If we may safely apply Trotter's generalization to the 
present antagonism among groups (within nations, and also 
national groups) we might say that the rapid differentiation 
of the human species has had an effect of creating within 
the species man a large number of types of sub-specific 
value, and in this respect man differs greatly from any other 
species. Differences recognized by groups of the same 
species of animals are generally not sufficient to create an- 
tagonism among the groups, but in the case of man these dif- 
ferences have had precisely the effect of marking off groups 
with antagonistic interests. The animal society dom- 
inated by a few instincts directed for the most part toward 
external objects preserves a state of peace within the species. 
Man by reason of his intelligence and his capacities for 
specialization and the great number of his desires tends 
to prey upon his own kind. This segregation is in part 
artificial, becomes conventional and is subject to the effects 
of leadership that tends to fixate artificial distinctions, but 
it is also in part an effect of the exigencies of the wider life 
of man, of his superiority of which variability of conduct 
is an essential aspect. This differentiation is one of the 
conditions of a firmer organization in the society of man 
than any animal society can attain, but at the present time 
the two processes of differentiation and organization are 
to some extent antagonistic to one another. 

Trotter maintains that the tendency of nature is to in- 
crease and maintain the homogeneity of the species, but 
we should say rather that the whole process of differentia- 
tion and organization is upon a level in which the biological 
processes that make for or against homogeneity have but 



Instincts in War 61 

little effect. The task before man is social. It is not so 
much a consciousness of his destiny as a species that man 
requires, but of his work as an organized group. It is 
due to a rapid differentiation and increase in man's desires 
that he has become a species in which there is internal war- 
fare. It must be by the control of these desires in a con- 
scious process of organization that he will become, if ever, 
a well-ordered and homogeneous group. Trotter thinks 
of such a change as a biological phenomenon, as being one 
of those momentous steps which a very few times have been 
taken in the development of organic life in the world. 

We cannot discuss fully here these biological views, as 
they relate to the future organization of the world. That 
the explanation of wars within the human species this view 
affords is correct so far as it goes one would admit. 
Men fight among themselves as animals do not, because of 
their differences. We should prefer to think of these dif- 
ferences, however, neither as a phase of biological differ- 
entiation as structural change nor as functional adaptation 
by differentiation of reactions to the same stimuli, but 
as the effect of the new consciousness of desires that came 
with the rise of man from the animal stage, and the condi- 
tions under which these desires could and must be realized. 
It is the complexity of interests that has given to man his 
antagonisms and his differences, and these secondary dif- 
ferences have been utilized as a means of still further de- 
veloping the desires and satisfying them, or justifying their 
satisfaction. It is man's intelligence and his capacity for 
being governed in his conduct by many desires that teaches 
him to make war upon his own kind, and the very same 
qualities make his associations firm and lasting. But just 
in this way the human group ceases to be a herd and to 
be dominated by herd instincts. To interpret war, there- 
fore, as an effect of social instinct or herd instinct upon 
the instincts of aggression or of self-protection, or as the 
effect of aroused instincts of aggression and self-protection 



62 The Psychology of Nations 

exciting the herd instinct, is unsatisfactory because it is 
too simple, and erroneously undertakes to explain human 
life in terms of instinct and also carries biological analogies 
too far. These views, if we understand them, seem to have 
the characteristic faults of all purely biological sociology. 

That, however, the " herd instinct," or the social feeling 
or the cohesive force in groups, whatever it may be, is 
exceedingly strong and persistent is shown by the recent 
war. We see a world highly differentiated, and with wide 
associations which seemed to have become permanent be- 
coming at once a world in which the lines of cleavage 
are based upon propinquity and political organization. All 
ties, except national ties, were broken up. The nation, con- 
scious of itself, becomes a unit or personality, and the 
sense of personality of a nation becomes greatly intensified 
in time of war. The individual becomes unimportant, both 
in his own estimation and in the eye of the law. It is the 
life of the nation as a whole that is felt to be threatened 
and under this threat the group as a whole becomes an ob- 
ject of devotion and solicitude. Nicolai (79) comments 
upon this Massengefuchl and says that, when not counter- 
balanced by higher elements of social consciousness, it may 
be a low and dangerous element in the consciousness of 
groups. Sumner (70) also speaks of the extraordinary 
power of gregariousness, and says that when the movement 
is upon a vast scale, the numbers engaged being very large, 
there is always an exhilaration connected with the move- 
ment, and that if the causes involved are believed to be 
deep and holy, the force of this gregarious mood may be- 
come demoniacal. 

There are two especially remarkable changes that take 
place in the social life in war or in the act of going to 
war, and which represent the social instinct or feeling at its 
highest point. These phenomena are types of social re- 
action, but the question may be raised whether they do 
not represent something more than reactions in the ordinary 



Instincts in War 63 

sense. We see in times of war, first, a greatly increased 
sensitiveness to leadership, a craving for devotion to a 
leader, indeed, which is sometimes pathetic in its effort to 
transform really commonplace men into religious objects. 
The leader as a concept and an ideal is a product of the 
social mood itself, which does for him precisely what roman- 
tic love does for its object, exerts a creative effect upon 
him. The leader is magnified to heroic size and held up 
before the enemy as a threat. It is plain to be seen that 
this devotion to leader and imaginative treatment of him 
is in part a defensive reaction. The individual hides be- 
hind this colossal figure, and thus feels himself safe. But 
this protective impulse that creates the invincible leader is 
not the only motive ; at least it is probably not the only one. 
The leader represents the ideals and the ambitions of the 
people, and his prestige and the forms that surround him, 
especially everything that is aesthetic or suggests the heroic, 
symbolize the craving for power in a people. The strength 
and the peculiar abandon and perversity, one may say, of the 
affections of a nation toward the leader in time of war 
make the rise of such a leader dreaded by the political powers 
in every country. Newspapers, in every war, find some 
heroic figure whom they exploit as a coming dictator, and 
changes of leadership in the field apparently sometimes 
have reference to these popular currents. But a nation in 
love with its leader is strong in defense, and readily be- 
comes aggressive, and this relation of mass to leader is 
of course one of the main foundations of military morale. 
The second universal social phenomenon of war is the 
greatly intensified feeling of solidarity as -shown in com- 
radeship and united feelings on the part of the people. 
This too is in part, and only in part, a protective reaction. 
The individual becomes safe by becoming a part of a whole 
which then alone seems to have real existence and true 
value. The individual loses himself in the whole, but the 
whole group also becomes absorbed and taken into the sphere 



64 The Psychology of Nations 

of protection and interest of the individual. The individual 
becomes highly sensitive to everything that happens to the 
group, and peculiarly affected by the social mood of com- 
radeship. This spirit of comradeship becomes one of the 
most conspicuous qualities of the social life in time of war. 
Comradeship in arms is of course the highest point of 
this social solidarity. The mass action, the close physical 
relationship, subjection to the same narrow routine and 
the common experiences of danger, induce social states 
that represent the most complete expression of pure social 
feeling, and excite moods which, upon occasion may reach 
the highest degree of ecstasy or intoxication and lead to 
acts of the most exalted heroism. 

These changes in the social life in time of war are 
striking and fundamental. To explain them would mean 
to explain social feeling itself. We may say that these 
phenomena of the social life are precisely the herd reactions 
the biological writers speak of, but to do so would mean, 
from our point of view, to ignore some very significant 
aspects of human social life. It would ignore first of all 
the ecstatic quality of the higher social life, which is indeed 
the essential quality of the social spirit of war. Instead 
of saying that this intensity of feeling is merely a reflex 
of an instinctive reaction, we should say that it is the 
expression of, and in part the satisfaction of, desires that 
are fulfilled in the social experience of war. The intense so- 
cial life is craved, not as an instinctive reaction, but as a 
complex state expressing explicit desires. The craving 
for this social solidarity and ecstasy of social feeling is a 
factor in the causes of war. What we experience socially 
in times of peace is a society in which social feeling is 
narrow and provincial, in which we are conscious of many 
antagonistic motives. This social life fails to satisfy the 
desires which are seeking expression in the social life. 
That war is in part a creation of the social impulse seeking 
expression may be assumed from the nature of the social 



Instincts in War 65 

feelings that are excited in war. That such social feel- 
ing is a creation in the sense that it is desired, we see if 
in no other way in the fact that social ecstasy is the most 
universal form of satisfaction of all those impulses which 
fuse in the intoxication impulse, where we recognize it as 
the craving for an abundant or real life. Life is most real 
in its intensely dramatic social forms. Social ecstasy is 
in part a conscious adaptation. It is something that is de- 
sired and induced, and artificially cultivated in various ways, 
especially by a variety of aesthetic social experiences, and 
in the cults of intoxication. Alcohol has been used specifi- 
cally throughout the world and from the beginning at least 
of the historical period for the purpose of creating social 
feeling. Patriotism is in part, we may say, a cultivated so- 
cial emotion, and in the art of manners we see the social life 
given forms which will increase its susceptibility to sug- 
gestion, its persuasive force and its organized expression. 
Such facts show us social emotion which is something more 
than the feeling side of an instinctive reaction. 

This is hardly the place to try to elucidate the funda- 
mental principles of the psychology of the social feelings 
or instincts, but it may be helpful to suggest in outline cer- 
tain divergences in the theory of the social life that seem to 
be in point. We see on one side many writers who tend 
to regard social phenomena as mainly the result of instinct, 
as the expression either of a single instinct or of a combina- 
tion of several specific instinctive tendencies. Contrasted 
with these views are the theories according to which social 
life is something that is mainly created by reason, based, so 
to speak, upon the observation that in union there is strength. 
Neither of these views seems to be satisfactory. That so- 
cial feeling is based upon instinct is clear, but that it is also 
something created, synthetic, and subjected to selective proc- 
esses seems also evident. Precisely what the instinctive 
basis of the social life is, perhaps one cannot with any cer- 
tainty determine, nor can we say how many specific in- 



66 The Psychology of Nations 

stincts enter into it. But that social feeling in its higher 
levels is a very complex mood, in which, although there 
are several instinctive reactions or feelings, there is to be 
discovered no social instinct as such, is the conclusion which 
we reach. 

Social behavior is a development of all the fundamental 
tendencies of the organism. It has its roots both in the re- 
productive and the nutritional motives. These fundamental 
tendencies have issued phylogenetically in specific reac- 
tions that enter into the social life at all its levels, and in 
the life of the individual these reactions, expressing needs 
and desires, issue in highly complex moods, in which funda- 
mental feelings are present but do not constitute the whole 
of the social moods. The individual does various specific 
things with reference to his fellows which are of the nature 
of instinctive reactions, but both in the phyletic develop- 
ment and the development in the individual, elements that 
enter into the modern social life as instincts have tended 
to lose their specific character, have become general or 
merely organic, have been transformed and have to some 
extent lost their original significance. 

The motives of hunger, the reactions of the reproductive 
mechanisms, reactions to visual impressions and to sounds, 
warmth reactions, the huddling of fear, the influences of 
suggestion, susceptibility to all the stimuli of the social 
object enter into social feelings, and remain to some extent 
as instinctive reactions in the higher social processes. But 
we do not seem to find any general social instinct, or any 
specific herd instinct or any definite and broadly acting pro- 
tective and aggressive instincts. As compared with some 
other views of the social feelings ours assumes in one way 
more and in another less of instinct in the social life. 
There is more instinct in the sense that more specific in- 
stinctive reactions are recognized in it, but less in assuming 
that these reactions are derivatives of primitive reactions 
of the organism, and also because they become transformed 



Instincts in War 67 

and fused and lose their original forms. They have come 
from common sources in organic life, we might say, and 
they meet again in the general moods which they help to 
create. 

Conclusions 

It is an important point to observe that most if not all 
of the specific instinctive reactions and feelings engendered 
in war, or occurring as an incitement to war, are capable 
of inducing ecstatic states. There are several of these 
movements and states, each of which can become, so to 
speak, a foundation for the development of ecstasy. 
Combat may and must do this, and probably war could 
never be carried on at all unless danger and death had quali- 
ties which arouse ecstatic moods. There is a joy in fight- 
ing, in killing, and in the tumult of battle that becomes one 
of the most important of military assets, and is one of the 
main elements of morale in the field. This capacity of 
human nature to make over that which is intrinsically pain- 
ful into the pleasurable is one of the paradoxes of human 
life to be explained and taken into account in the study 
of the psychology of war. Fear itself may induce an 
ecstasy, both in the individual, as we know from many re- 
ported cases from the late war, and as a social mood in 
which the fear contributes a quality of intensity and ferocity 
to patriotism. The gambling mood, which is in part a play 
with fear, is another ecstatic reaction seen in war, and it 
is often the means of clearing the way, so to speak, for 
free and uninhibited action. 

Of course all the purely aesthetic elements in the social 
life have this effect of arousing exalted moods, and indeed 
that is precisely their function. All social impulses tend 
in this same direction, and there is induced in all intense 
social states an intoxication mood. In these social states, 
the reproductive motive is often clearly discernible, but 
partly by common consent and convention, and partly be- 



68 The Psychology of Nations 

cause of the composite and fused form of impulses in the 
social mood, robbed of its specific reactions and converted 
into a new product, regarded both as conduct and as feel- 
ing. 

All religious states aroused in war tend to become 
ecstatic. Their work is to overcome the sense of tragedy 
of war, and it is only by becoming intense and voluminous, 
so to speak, that they can accomplish their work at all. 
Either they must end in a mysticism which includes or 
takes the form of exalted moods, or they must, as can be 
accomplished in some temperaments, become dynamic states 
by inspiring a fatalistic attitude, which is at bottom a sense 
of throwing oneself unreservedly into the hands of fate. 

We may best think of these complex war moods as the 
forces out of which wars are made, and the spirit in 
which they are conducted, but not as by their own initia- 
tive creating wars. These intoxication moods or ecstasies 
are forces which contain desires that are general, we say; 
they are mental processes that act as a means of greatly 
increasing the volume of all social actions. When we 
analyze them we find specific desires in them, and evidences 
of instinct and primitive feeling, but they are not in them- 
selves tendencies toward specific reactions and in fact the 
motor tendencies they contain more or less inhibit one an- 
other. 

In general, these war moods of which we speak are 
precipitated by definite and incisive reactions of fear and 
anger. These emotions of fear or anger seem to be the 
necessary positive stimuli to induce the moods of war. 
Fear and anger, no one can maintain, are the sole causes of 
war, and they are far from being the sole factors of the 
war moods, but they are the usual precipitants of war. 

Fear and anger as social emotions cannot sustain organ- 
ized and effectual social activity upon a large scale ; we see 
them always, in war, taken up, transformed, absorbed in 
moods which are at once more practical, and more exalted 



Instincts in War 69 

and which, as complex processes, can be sustained over 
long periods of time. But these primitive reactions of 
anger and fear enter into the ecstatic moods, become asso- 
ciated with or induce aesthetic and religious states of con- 
sciousness, gain moral justification or religious exploitation, 
become aspects of directive and dynamic moods and so give 
force and efficiency to morale and strategy. 

War appears as a breakdown of certain modes of volition. 
Certain types of conflict are abandoned, and aggressive ac- 
tivities become more simple and powerful, but war is no 
reversion to primitive instinct, or to any number of in- 
stincts. The resulting states of mind are too rational as 
means, and too exalted and ideal to be thus primitive. New 
content is introduced into social consciousness and new 
purposes come to light in these ecstasies, even though the 
consciously sought objectives may be archaic and conven- 
tional and the mental states traceable to more elementary 
states, and the conduct be similar in purpose and type to the 
simpler forms of conduct we find in the animal world. 
What we are trying to impress here is the well known truth 
that the whole of a thing is not necessarily contained in 
its parts. It is the meaning of the war-mood as a whole, 
as a summation of many factors of the mental life, and as a 
direction of social consciousness as a whole that is its most 
important characteristic. 



CHAPTER IV 

AESTHETIC ELEMENTS IN THE MOODS AND IMPULSES 
OF WAR 

That experiences and motives which belong to the field 
of the aesthetic play an important part in war can hardly 
be doubted. The whole history of war shows this, and 
even in the beginning war seems to be an activity carried 
on in part for its own sake, and not entirely for its prac- 
tical results, and thus has qualities which later are ex- 
plicitly aesthetic. We cannot of course separate sharply 
the aesthetic motive from everything else in studying so 
highly complex an object as war, but that war does partake 
of the nature of what we call the beautiful, and that the 
craving for the beautiful is a factor in the causes of war 
seem to be certain. The relation of art to war is of course 
no new theme. War has often been praised because of 
its aesthetic nature, and its dramatic features. It is called 
a beautiful adventure. It is reproduced in pictorial art, 
represented in music, and thus glorified and adorned, show- 
ing at least that it can readily be made to appear beautiful if 
it does not in itself possess beauty. Those who think of 
war as related to play also connect it with art. Nicolai 
(79), who condemns war, says that it is when war as an 
instinctive action is no longer useful, but is performed for 
its own sake that it becomes beautiful. 

We cannot undertake to enumerate all the aesthetic quali- 
ties of war, or to show all the relations of the aesthetic as- 
pects to other motives of war in detail, since to do so would 
mean to work out some of the fundamental principles of 
aesthetics. We may begin, however, by saying that war as 

70 



Aesthetic Elements of War 71 

a whole, as a movement in which there is complete organiza- 
tion of social forces shows already the marks of aesthetic ex- 
perience and of art. As such a unification of interest in a 
strong and uninhibited movement, as a coordinated ex- 
pression of deep desires, a multiplicity of action with a 
unity of purpose, so to speak, war is aesthetic in form 
although to mention such very general qualities does not go 
very far toward characterizing an object. 

In its meaning as tragedy war contains and exerts a 
strong aesthetic appeal. With all its horrors, war fasci- 
nates the mind. As fate, death, history it inspires awe, 
and creates a sense of the inevitableness of events and of the 
play of transcendental and inexorable forces in human life. 
When, under any influence, these feelings appear as an ac- 
cepting and willing of evil, we have the tragic movement as 
we find it in art. The death motif in war is the center 
of a variety of states which are ecstatic and have aesthetic 
quality. The religion of valor, the passion that is aroused 
by abandoning oneself to fate, the absolute devotion of 
service are aesthetic in form as experience, whatever else 
they may be. The relation of these motives to love and 
to the reproductive impulses has often been noticed. De- 
votion and death appear as beautiful; their representation 
in art is in part a recognition of this fact ; in part it is an 
effort to transform them into the forms of the aesthetic. 
Art celebrates, but also creates, this luxury of feeling, and 
war also in its own dramatic movement transforms ugly and 
plain facts of life by including them in ecstatic states, and 
surrounding them with glory. 

The ideal of glorified death plays a large part in the 
spirit of war. In war the fear of death is not only in 
great part stilled, but there is a longing to tempt fate and 
also to experience death itself, and this desire may be- 
come ecstatic. Here we see in effect one of the most im- 
portant functions of the aesthetic, which is to carry on a 
drama of the will in which something that is in itself pain- 



72 The Psychology of Nations 

ful becomes pleasant and desired. The desire for war is 
to some extent a desire for death, a longing for a form of 
euthanasia in which the individual dies but in a sense 
lives — lives as glorified in death, and also in the con- 
tinuance of the life of the group and of the country into 
which he has been absorbed. It is of course its relation 
to death that more than anything else has made it neces- 
sary that war should appeal to art, and take an aesthetic 
form, and without the aid of the aesthetic, war could not 
maintain itself in the world. As a sheer fulfillment of 
duty war could not survive. By the strength of its aesthetic 
appeal war must control and overcome the instinct of self- 
preservation. 

War appeals to the human mind as the great adventure of 
life. To the healthy normal man this appeal, under cer- 
tain circumstances, may be compelling in its power. Man 
feels the call of adventure in his blood. War may seem 
at times the natural expression of what is most real and 
most essentially masculine in human nature. War is the 
essence of all the dramatic and heroic story of the world. 
The past lives most vividly in this theme of war, and the 
sense of remoteness in time lends an aesthetic coloring to 
all the story of war, and is in part its fascination. The dead 
heroes of to-day are glorified by linking their names with 
the great heroes of the past. 

To the glory of the individual, which is an aesthetic ap- 
peal, is added the still stronger appeal of the ideal of na- 
tional glory. The image created in the mind which sus- 
tains the devotion of the individual is also an aesthetic 
form. It is the idea of a nation transformed by story, sym- 
bol and eloquence that is established. The dimness and 
mysticism of the long ago, all dramatic scenes of the na- 
tional life, the forms of royalty are used in transforming 
reality into an ideal. The consciousness of a nation is in- 
deed an artist which creates an ideal nation, glorifying 
and transforming the past, and painting a vivid picture of 



Aesthetic Elements of War 73 

the empire that is to be. No little part in the German idea 
of the fatherland has been taken by the revived image of the 
old German Empire, and the story of Charlemagne, the 
Ottonides, the Hohenstaufen and the Hohenzollern which 
has been woven into the life of the present and has become 
an aesthetic setting for the idea of future greatness. 

In the religion of valor, also, we may find aesthetic ele- 
ments. Valor represents in this cult the spirit of the supe- 
rior man. It is an aristocratic idea. Military life is full of 
this theme. The ideals of noblesse oblige, honor, the spirit 
of sportsmanship, enter into it, and all these concepts are in 
part aesthetic in nature. It is neither as moral nor as practi- 
cal ideas that they have so deeply influenced society, but 
because of their appeal to the sense of the beautiful. All 
this aspect of war and military life, both in its motives and 
in its forms, is closely related to the pure beauty of art. 
The play spirit also, which in some of its developments at 
least is aesthetic, enters into the motives of war. War, we 
say, is the great adventure. It is the realization of power. 
It is an expression of the love of the sense of freedom. It 
is the great game, in which everything is staked. The love 
of danger and the love of gambling with life that it con- 
tains have roots that are also roots of various forms of 
art. 

Another element, aesthetic in motive and form, obviously 
related to the reproductive functions of the individual, is the 
display motive. This motive of display is concerned espe- 
cially with the idea of courage. It is of course a deep 
desire of the male to display courage before the female. 
This display motive must be the main motive of the uniform 
and all the other ornamental aspects of military life. Rank, 
titles and decorations belong to the same movement. They 
are indications of the advancement of the man in those es- 
sential qualities of the soldier, the chief of which is cour- 
age. The aesthetic forms in which courage is represented 
help to sustain it, and are an important element in morale, 



74 The Psychology of Nations 

and they also serve a purpose in creating or adding to the 
allurement of the service and the fascination of war. It 
is the craving for the display of courage, the desire of the 
man " to show the stuff that is in him," that gives to war 
some of its most persistent aesthetic forms, and these 
aesthetic forms help both to make the display of courage 
effective and to create courage. 

Among these aesthetic elements of war must be considered 
of course the rhythms, the forms, all the concerted action, 
the marching (which may be regarded as one of the forms 
of the dance), the parade, the maneuvering and drill that 
enter into military life. Already in primitive warfare these 
aesthetic forms begin to appear and indicate clearly both 
their practical significance as means of affecting the will, and 
their relations to the religious and to the reproductive mo- 
tives. The warrior tries to create in his person the appear- 
ance of power, and also by the aesthetic forms he introduces 
into his warfare, the feeling of power. He believes indeed 
that through these aesthetic forms he actually creates or 
exerts power. This is the motive of the war dance, which 
as an aesthetic form produces this ecstasy of the feeling of 
power. This power is often conceived to be magical ; the 
women dancing at home are supposed to exert an influence 
upon the men in the field or upon the enemy, and the sav- 
age believes that in his own displays he actually overcomes 
the spirit of his enemy. Art is here plainly serving a pur- 
pose. Display is a means of creating an impression in the 
minds of the enemy. It also has the purpose of creating an 
effect in the mind of the soldier himself. The art in mili- 
tary life is, indeed, to give the impression of power to all 
who must be affected by the exhibition of force. 

All social life contains elements that appeal to the aesthetic 
sense, and these aesthetic elements are by no means solely 
ornamental. The universal development of etiquette and 
manners has reference to very practical aspects of the social 
life. Their function is to influence the will. The highly 



Aesthetic Elements of War 75 

developed etiquette of military life is not merely to facilitate 
the military functions, and it is no explanation of the for- 
malism of the military life to say that this is a sign of its 
archaic nature. Formalism in this life is one of the means 
taken to cover up all the details of militarism that are re- 
pugnant: the hardship, the lack of freedom and the like. 
Etiquette acts persuasively upon the will, it helps to make 
military life desired, and to make men submissive under 
control of absolute leaders. All formalism in social life, 
considered in one aspect of it, is a symbol of the resigna- 
tion of the will of the individual. As thus a symbol it may 
either convey or mediate social feeling, and when social 
feeling is absent the art of manners may become a substitute 
for this social feeling, and in both these ways it is a means 
of giving to society cohesion, order and form. 

Such considerations as these help to explain the longing 
for war or its equivalent which persists in the human heart. 
It helps us to realize the truth of Cramb's (66) assertion 
that the whole history of the world shows that man has 
lacked not only the power but the will to end war and estab- 
lish perpetual peace. There are still motives in the mind of 
man that make him approve of war. War is perpetuated 
because of its heroic form, as a form of experience in which 
the meaning of life is felt to be exploited, in which life is 
transformed and glorified, in which the tragedy of life, 
which in any case is inevitable, becomes a tragedy which, 
because it bears the form of art, is acceptable and even 
longed for. This is the allurement of war, its persistent 
illusion, perhaps. The aesthetic forms of war take war out 
of the field of reason, and on occasion make it transcend 
or pervert reason. So we may understand why it is true 
that sometimes those who but little understand why they 
are to die on the field of battle may display the greatest 
courage and the greatest enthusiasm for war, and we must 
not say that these causes are fatuous because they exist in 
the realm of aesthetic values. 



j 6 The Psychology of Nations 

If we take war too realistically, with reference to its 
practical motives, its mere killing and looting, which we 
may suspect are related to the nutritional motive that we 
always find running through human conduct, and leave out 
of account those aspects of war which seem to belong mainly 
to the reproductive motive, to the enthusiasm and intoxi- 
cation and art of the world, we shall to that extent misun- 
derstand it. These motives cannot, of course, be separated 
definitely from one another in analyzing conduct, but we 
cannot be very wrong in differentiating phases of war which 
belong predominantly to the reproductive motive. It is 
because, at least, all deep tendencies of life are in- 
volved in war that it is so hard to eliminate it from experi- 
ence. If war were an instinctive reaction it might be con- 
trolled by reason. If it were an atavism or a rudimentary 
organ some social surgery or other might relieve us of it. 
But war is a product of man's idealism, misdirected and 
impracticable idealism though it may be, but still something 
very expressive of what man is. It is this idealism of na- 
tions, leading them to the larger life, that makes them cling 
to war, whether for good or for evil. It will avail little to 
prove to the world that war is an evil, so long as war is de- 
sired, or so long as something which war so readily yields 
is desired. Statistics of eugenics and proofs that war ruins 
business will not yet cure us of our habit of war, and not 
at all so long as there is a vacancy in life which only the 
dramatic experiences of war can fill. When war is aban- 
doned, it will be given up probably not because economists 
and sociologists vote against it, and we see that peace is 
good, but by the consent of a world which, once for all, is 
willing to renounce something that is dear to it and held to be 
good, if for no other reason, because it symbolizes what life 
and reality are. The world appears to have two minds 
about war, or at least it does not hold consistently to any 
one attitude toward it. Beneath all judgments about the 



Aesthetic Elements of War 77 

evils of war, there is the allurement of these aesthetic mo- 
tives which must be reckoned with in any psychology of 
war, or in any practical plan for eliminating war from the 
future experience of the race. 



CHAPTER V 

PATRIOTISM, NATIONALISM AND NATIONAL HONOR 

Many authors find in patriotism or in national honor the 
chief or the sole cause of war. Jones (37), the Freudian, 
for example, says that patriotism is the sum of those causes 
of war which are conscious as distinguished from the re- 
pressed motives. Nicolai (79) says that patriotism and 
chauvinism would have no meaning and no interest without 
reference to war, and that for the arts of peace one needs 
no patriotism at all. Hoesch-Ernst (32), another German 
writer, says that patriotism has made history a story of 
wars. It has developed the highest virtues (and the worst 
vices), but it creates artificial boundaries among peoples, 
and gives to every fighter the belief that he is contending 
against brute force. Veblen (97) says that patriotism is 
the only obstacle to peace among the nations. MacCurdy 
(37) speaks of the paradox of human nature seen in the 
fact that the loyalty we call patriotism, which may make 
a man a benefactor to the whole race, may become a menace 
to mankind when it is narrowly focussed. Novicow says 
that what shall be foreign is a purely conventional matter. 
Another writer remarks that patriotism is the guise under 
which the instincts of tiger and wolf run riot. 

Several writers, Powers (75), and especially Veblen, place 
questions of national honor among the main causes of war. 
Veblen would hold that wars never occur unless the ques- 
tions involved are first converted into questions of national 
honor — and are then, but only then, supported as moral 
issues. Other writers are to be found who make the same 

78 



Patriotism, Nationalism and National Honor 79 

claims for honor, saying that wars are always over ques- 
tions of national honor — honor always meaning here, let 
us observe, not moral principle but prestige, dignity, analo- 
gous to what we call personal pride in the individual. 

Broadly speaking, we may say that such views of war base 
it upon the fact that nations are individuals, having per- 
sonality and self-consciousness, and are moved by emotions 
such as dominate the individual, although such analogies 
between individual and group are never free from objec- 
tion. But that the consciousness of the group as an indi- 
vidual may be exceedingly intense, full of aggressiveness, 
intolerance and pride, of great sensitiveness to all outside 
the group, is, of course, obvious from the history of nations. 
Groups thus endowed with a sense of solidarity and sensi- 
tiveness become highly vitalized and persistent personalities 
which stalk through the pages of history with tremendous 
power and tenacity of purpose. Nations thus live intensely, 
and in their intense feelings and personal attributes there 
are expressed purposes and ideals, conscious and uncon- 
scious, analogous to those which make the individual also 
an historical entity. 

There seem to be two aspects of group personality that 
need to be investigated in detail in any study of war, and 
which must be distinguished from one another, as they may 
be by referring to the primitive or central emotional quality 
which each has. These are patriotism and the sense of 
honor, the former, for our purposes, to be regarded as the 
sum of the affections a people has for that which is its own; 
the second a sum of those feelings and attitudes, the emo- 
tional root of which is pride. These feelings are the af- 
fective basis of the idea of nationalism. 

Patriotism, or love of country or feeling of loyalty to- 
ward country, is a highly complex emotion or mood, and 
its object, an ideal construction, is formed by a process of 
abstraction in which certain qualities of home, environment, 
social objects selected by those feelings are made over into 



80 The Psychology of Nations 

a composite whole. Patriotism is immediately connected 
with the fact that men, by some biological or other neces- 
sity are formed into groups, in which the consciousness of 
the individual in regard to the group and its members and 
its habitat is different from the consciousness in regard to 
everything outside. Patriotism is devotion to all that per- 
tains to the group as a separate unit, and its form and in- 
tensity are dependent upon what the group as a unit does. 
The size and organization of the group to which the patri- 
otic feeling may go out may, it is obvious, differ widely. 

There appear to be five more or less distinct and different 
factors in patriotism ; or, we might say, five or more objects 
of attachment, the love of which all together constitutes 
patriotism. These objects are: home, as physical country; 
the group as collection of individuals ; mores, the sum of 
the customs of a people ; country as personality or historical 
object, and its various symbols ; leaders or organized gov- 
ernment or state, its conventions and representations. 

The deepest of all strata in the very complex feeling of 
patriotism, one which is concerned in every relation among 
nations, is the devotion to, or habituation to — or we might 
say identity with — the great complex of ideals, feelings, 
and the like which make up the customs, folkways, mores 
or ethos of a group. The individual as a conscious per- 
son is to such an extent created by these conscious factors 
that we find that the reality sense is in part produced by 
them. We have already referred to the belief on the part 
of many peoples that they alone are real. Foreigners with 
different mores probably always seem less real than our 
own people : they may even be looked upon as automata, 
as not being moved by the feelings and purposes that we 
ourselves have. The language of the foreigner, the unedu- 
cated man is inclined to think of as having no meaning. 
Every group has its own ways, and whatever else war may 
be, it is in every case an argument for the superiority of the 
ways of the group. Each group in war feels that its own 



Patriotism, Nationalism and National Honor 81 

most intimate possessions, its morality and its genius are 
attacked. It guards these instinctively, and a part of the 
purpose of aggression is the desire to make these things pre- 
vail in the world, because they are felt to be the only right, 
true and sensible ways. This preference for our own ways, 
and participation in them, is the basic fact of nationality. 

The feeling of patriotism is thus primarily an aesthetic 
appreciation (or at least an immediate and intuitive one) 
of the totality of the life of the group. Just as standards 
of normality and artistic form in regard to the human per- 
son and its adornment vary from group to group, and are 
produced in the consciousness of the group, so there is a 
reaction of pleasure to, and attachment for, the whole of the 
life that surrounds the individual. This appreciation is 
wider than moral feeling, which indeed is in part based 
upon it, and is a sense of the fitness of any act to belong to 
the whole of the conduct that promotes the welfare of the 
group. 

Patriotism is best known, or at least it is most celebrated, 
as an attachment to the native land as place. This is the 
poet's patriotism. It is, however, something more than a 
mere love of the homeland as landscape, and we cannot, in- 
deed, separate out any pure love of physical country. The 
love of country seems to be an expansion of the attachment 
to home, as the place in which the family relations are ex- 
perienced. The sense of place is the core of the love of 
home, but it is supplemented and reenforced by the personal 
affections. The attachment to place has also its biological 
roots, the sense of familiarity of place being, of course, as 
the basis of orientation, a deep element in consciousness. 
Fear of the unknown increases the attachment to the known. 
The land as the source of livelihood is loved, and there are 
also older elements in the love of the land as is shown by 
myths and folklore. There is in it the idea of ownership 
but also the idea of belonging to the land. So there is both 
the filial and the parental attitude in patriotism. As father- 



82 The Psychology of Nations 

land or motherland country is superior to and antecedent 
to us; as possession it is something to hold and to transmit, 
to improve and to leave the impress of our work upon. As 
historic land there is the idea of sacred soil, of land which 
persists through all time. Ancestor worship enters; the 
soil as the resting place of forefathers acquires not only a 
religious meaning, but there is attached to it such feeling 
of an aesthetic nature as is attached to everything that is 
full of tradition. The protective attitude is prominent in 
this patriotic love of land. There is in it the fear of inva- 
sion, a sense of the sacredness and inviolability of the body 
of a country when it has once been established as an his- 
torical entity. A study of the psychology of invasion and 
of homesickness would no doubt throw further light upon 
the still unknown aspects of the intricate moods of home 
love. 

A third element in patriotism is social feeling. This is 
primitive, but whether it is a herd consciousness or a radi- 
ation of the social feelings connected with blood relation- 
ship and community of immediate practical interests it is 
not especially important to decide in this connection, except 
that the assumption of a specific herd instinct as distin- 
guished from social feeling or instinct appears to be un- 
necessary. Loyalty of the individual to the group, which is 
accompanied by or is based upon intensified or ecstatic feel- 
ing is one of the strongest elements of patriotism. Social 
feeling as an attachment to the widest group, the nation, is 
in general a latent feeling or an undeveloped one. We see 
it becoming active and intense only under circumstances in 
which the whole group is threatened or for some other rea- 
son is compelled to act as a unit. The recent psychology 
of the soldier shows us that absolute devotion to or absorp- 
tion in the whole may be produced automatically by the 
proper stimuli, and may be controlled as the mechanism of 
morale, and that elementary sensations enter into it. The 
wider social consciousness as devotion to the whole group, 



Patriotism, Nationalism and National Honor 83 

the nation, is based upon such reactions, and can probably 
not be fully developed without them. 

This transformation of the individual is something de- 
sired and sought by the individual. It comes as a fulfill- 
ment of impulses that are latent in the social life, and these 
impulses are tendencies to seek exalted states of social feel- 
ing, rather than to perform specific social functions. War 
is seized upon by the social consciousness, so to speak, as 
an opportunity to extend itself and become more intense, 
and indeed in war we see the social consciousness perform- 
ing a work of genius, overcoming apparently insurmount- 
able obstacles and aversions. Under such circumstances, 
social feeling becomes strongly fortified against many sug- 
gestions that tend to break it down. An intense ferocity 
is directed toward any disloyal member of the group, a fic- 
titious character may be attributed to the enemy, and there 
is an imaginative interpretation of all his acts in a manner 
favorable to uniting the sentiment of the group. This does 
not appear to be merely a defensive reaction or a result of 
fear, but an awareness of the precarious condition of the 
social feeling itself, when it is widely extended. In its 
moments of most extreme and fanatical intensity it is likely 
to be most unstable. It has been said that the surest way 
to break down social feeling is to make it include too much. 
The conditions of war always create that danger. Patriot- 
ism is greatly intensified, but it is in danger of collapse. 
The mild patriotism and yet secure cohesion of peace is re- 
placed by a social consciousness increased in breadth and 
depth, but which is liable also to sudden contraction. All 
nations when at war appear to be quite as much afraid of 
themselves as they are of the enemy. It is in part this sus- 
ceptibility of social feeling to rapid and extreme variation 
that makes patriotism so mysterious a force. It may be 
extended in a moment to unite supposed incompatibles, or 
again apparently strongly cemented groups may fall into 
disunion. This seems to be due to the fact that social feel- 



84 The Psychology of Nations 

ing is plastic and is subject to control and is a force and not 
merely an instinctive reaction. 

The fourth element of patriotism is devotion to leader, 
to government, or to the idea of state. Devotion to leader 
must have been one of the earliest forms of loyalty. The 
prestige of the leader is acquired as the result of any action 
of the group under stimuli that produce either fear or anger. 
Just as the necessity for strong action creates the leader out 
of average humanity, so continuation of this necessity, that 
is the whole historical movement of the life of the group 
such as a nation continues to add elements of prestige to 
leadership. The exaltation and typically to some extent 
the deification of the leader is a natural consequence or 
aspect of the dramatic life of the group. The leader be- 
comes symbolic of the group, and of its purposes and mean- 
ing, so that in devoting itself to a leader the people do 
more than sustain an emotional relation to a superior per- 
son. They transfer their own individual nature, so to 
speak, to the leader so that he becomes the essence or the 
spirit of the people. 

The dynasty is the connecting link between the leader as 
the object of devotion of a people and the abstract idea of 
the state as an entity. The prestige and all the supernatu- 
ralism contained in the ideas of divine rights and divine 
descent that have become attached to the idea of kings are 
transferred to the government, or extended to the govern- 
ment or state. The illusion of superiority and remoteness 
is kept up by various forms and ceremonials. Becoming 
an abstract form, the organization or the office remaining 
while its personnel changes, the state acquires the character 
of a religious object. It takes on the character of the eter- 
nal, while still it retains all the persuasive and suggestive 
qualities that belong to individuals. The idea of state thus 
commands a very high degree of loyalty, and is in a sense 
itself a product of the feeling of loyalty. Once established 
the state becomes a medium through which patriotism may 



Patriotism, Nationalism and National Honor 85 

be subjected to control and also be manipulated for politi- 
cal ends. It can be extended, transferred, contracted ac- 
cording to what at any time may be subsumed under the 
government that has thus come to be the central and co- 
ordinating factor in the object of patriotism. 

Another element of patriotism appears in the form of a 
deep reaction of the mind of the individual, usually under 
the influence of social stimuli that take the form of artistic 
or dramatic situations, to the idea of country as a historical 
personage. This stimulus may be symbolic — the flag or 
any other emblem signifying the life or the spirit of a coun- 
try; or it may be concrete, historic, a story, and this story, 
which is the content of the idea of country, is in general a 
narrative assuming a certain artistic form in which facts are 
treated at least selectively, and usually imaginatively. This 
work of portrayal of the life of a nation by its story is con- 
sciously or unconsciously an appeal to the will; it is given 
artistic rather than scientific form for this reason. Its pur- 
pose is to present a national spirit, or ideal, or principle, 
and also to persuade the mind to become loyal to this spirit 
of country. 

All countries, as the object of the feeling of patriotism, 
tend to be personified, and it is thus as a person that coun- 
try commands the deepest loyalty of the individual. Hence 
the personified representation of country whenever the will 
of the individual is appealed to most strongly. Redier 
(30), a French writer, illustrates this very clearly when he 
pleads that the interest of the motherland must be placed 
first. It is not for liberty, or for the civilization of the 
world that the French are fighting, he says, but for France, 
" that most saintly, animated and tragic of figures." It is 
by this process of personification of country that the patriot- 
ism of the individual becomes most complete. He thus be- 
comes loyal to a living reality representing an idea, a spirit. 
To defend the honor and the integrity of this person, one is 
willing to sacrifice everything that is individually possessed, 



86 The Psychology of Nations 

in causes that can affect one materially in no important way. 
The desire for personal identity and immortality may be 
transferred to country as thus idealized, and the individual 
is satisfied to lose himself that country may live. The com- 
mon man realizes in a simple and concrete way, in regard to 
country, the Hegelian conception of state as the reality of 
mind in the world. About this idea of country held by the 
truly patriotic mind, as we find it expressed in history and 
in literature, there grows up a religious sentiment, which 
protects from criticism the qualities of the ideal personage. 
A certain pathos of country attaches itself to all who as 
great individuals represent country, and to all its portrayals 
and symbols. All these symbols acquire a high degree of 
suggestive force because of the depth of sentiment and the 
richness of the content of the ideas that have produced them. 

Patriotism, then, is a very complex idea and feeling which 
we realize as love of country — or, as we might better say, 
it is an animation by the idea of a very complex object which 
is country. It is a profound attachment, rooted in the most 
original and essential relations, and appears to be natural 
and necessary to every normal mind. The individual con- 
sciousness is complete only by including the attachments, in 
narrower and broader relations, to precisely the elements 
that enter into patriotism — to place, to the fundamental 
ways and appreciations of the social surroundings, to per- 
sons, to authority, to traditions. The composite effects of 
these attachments may be greater or smaller, as determined 
by a totality of conditions, but the foundations of patriot- 
ism, whatever its object, are deep in consciousness. 

The presence and persistence of patriotism in the world 
as a deep and intense feeling raises questions that are of 
both theoretical and practical importance. Here we are 
interested mainly in the relation of patriotism to war. 
There is a widespread view that may be expressed some- 
what as follows. Patriotism and internationalism or cos- 
mopolitanism are two opposites. Patriotism delimits 



Patriotism, Nationalism and National Honor 87 

groups, whether rightly or wrongly, and therefore produces 
antagonism in the world, and either causes wars directly or 
maintains a continual threat of wars. On the other hand 
there is cosmopolitanism, a very little too much of which 
might destroy civilization by removing the inspiration that 
country gives. Patriotism, standing for the integrity of 
historic entities, makes the world a world of nations having 
separate and conflicting wills. Thus we have a choice of 
evils — between a world of ardent, quarrelsome, but effi- 
cient groups and a world in which the chief motive of prog- 
ress, the vital principle of national growth, is left out. 

What is the truth about this? What is the relation of 
patriotism to war? Confusion and difference of views are 
likely to arise from a failure to distinguish in the idea of 
nationalism as a whole, between two very different emo- 
tions and purposes. Psychologically, patriotism is a sum 
of affections. As such, it has a distinct character, consti- 
tutes a mood, the possession of which may characterize an 
individual, and dominance by which may be the main fact 
in life. As a devotion to certain objects, this motive of 
patriotism enters into the sphere of motives of war, but it 
does so mainly, in our view, as a powerful and highly sug- 
gestible energy which becomes aggressive only under the 
stimulus of threat to its objects. Patriotism is indeed tol- 
erant by nature, and one may well doubt whether a genuine 
love of country is possible without a profound realization 
of the value of other countries as objects of devotion, and 
of the validity of the patriotism of every group. True 
patriotism must always be to some extent devotion to pa- 
triotism itself as a progressive force in the world, and it is, 
therefore, by the very fact of becoming intense and pure, 
a motive of internationalism. 

Such patriotism seems to be free from most of the delu- 
sions of greatness that affect national consciousness. Its 
mood is optimistic and its spirit tolerant and just. We 
should say that, instead of causing wars, by any initiative of 



88 The Psychology of Nations 

its own, it is itself caused by wars. It grows in a medium 
of defensive attitudes. It may, of course, play into the 
hands of all the aggressive motives of war; there are al- 
ways circumstances creating the illusion of danger, and it 
is possible, even, that there would be little war if there were 
no patriotism as love of country to support it. But on the 
other hand patriotism itself does not seem to be a cause of 
war. We should say, indeed, that patriotism, to the extent 
that it becomes intelligent and is a devotion to an ideal of 
country, and so is not dominated and influenced by other 
motives is a factor of peace in the world, and is moral in its 
principles and its nature. This is not the place in which 
to speak of internationalism as an ideal, but we may at least 
observe how, conceivably, patriotism may be cultivated, be 
greatly deepened and intensified, while at the same time 
and indeed because of this deepening of patriotism all inter- 
national causes are also served. Such patriotism may leave 
us with the danger of wars, since it leaves us with a world 
of individuals having wills and self-interests. But this 
world, with such a danger of wars, would be better after 
all than a certain kind of cosmopolitanism in a world such 
as, for example, might be arranged by an unintelligent so- 
cialism. 

National Honor 

There is another aspect of nationalism, which is psycho- 
logically distinct from patriotism as love of country, be- 
cause primitively it is based upon a different motive. Emo- 
tionally it is expressed finally as national pride, as we use 
the word mainly with a derogatory implication. Just as 
patriotic feeling is intensified and crystallized by fear, and 
is in a sense an overcoming of fear, by devotion, so this 
motive of pride rests upon a basis of jealousy and of hatred, 
and is essentially a movement in which display is used to 
obtain prestige, to overcome opposition and to defend con- 
sciousness against a sense of inferiority. As a display mo- 



Patriotism, Nationalism and National Honor 89 

tive it contains the feeling of anger, and the impulses of 
combat, and its relation to the reproductive motive is obvi- 
ous. It is as an aspect of a deeply pessimistic strain in 
national life, as a process in which an original and naive 
sense of reality and superiority, challenged and attacked 
and brought into the field of opposition and criticism and 
thus negated by a feeling of inferiority, that this motive be- 
comes of special interest to the psychology of nations and 
of war. 

The roots of this pride and honor process we can find 
in the impulses which lead groups to demonstrate power and 
prowess to one another, and in the original feeling of reality 
which is accompanied by the belief on the part of the group 
that its own ways are normal and right. We might men- 
tion as significant the widespread belief on the part of very 
primitive peoples that they alone are real people, or are 
the superior people of the world. The Lapps, Sumner (70) 
says, regard themselves as " men " as distinguished from 
all other peoples, a form of self-consciousness which lingers 
in all such antitheses as Jew and Gentile, Greek and bar- 
barian, and the like. This basic idea of difference in reality 
is not confined to a few peoples, but there is a tendency for 
every group to divide the world into two parties : selves and 
outsiders, and this feeling of difference readily develops 
into the moods in which there is a mystic sense on the part 
of a people of being the chosen people, and into those spe- 
cific theories of superiority that run through the history of 
most if not of all nations. It belongs to the psychology 
of Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Chinese, Japanese, and also to 
Americans as well as Germans ; and we learn that Russian 
books and newspapers sometimes discuss the civilizing mis- 
sion of Russia. 

That the motives of display and pride have been peculiarly 
active in Germany in the last few decades has been main- 
tained by many writers. German writers are inclined to 
believe that the motive for the " attack upon Germany " 



90 The Psychology of Nations 

was jealousy on the part of her enemies, that Germany was 
supreme in everything and other countries could tolerate 
this no longer. Germany has talked about her virtues, her 
rank, her coming place in the world. Bergson says that 
Germany's energy comes from pride. Some see the source 
of this alleged conceit of Germany and her excessive self- 
consciousness in Germany's hard experiences — the recent 
slavery, Germany's position as the battle ground of Europe, 
her late arrival among the great nations. Germany still 
lacks, they say, the quiet assurance that an old culture gives. 
Some call Germany morbid and quarrelsome. Again we 
hear the pride of Germany called an adolescent phenomenon, 
and they say that Germany is fighting not for principle but 
to see who is superior. Bosanquet (91) thinks that the 
lack of political liberty in Germany has had the effect of 
producing self-consciousness, and a morbid interest in small 
distinctions of title and rank, and that it is thwarted na- 
tional ambition that has expressed itself in such writers as 
Treitschke and Bernhardi. Bourdon (67) thinks Germany 
is jealous of the culture and the glory and the political and 
literary prestige of France. Collier (68) says that Ger- 
many is forever looking into a mirror rather than out the 
open window and even sees herself a little out of focus. 
The seriousness of the Germans, others think, is an indi- 
cation that Germany takes herself too seriously. 

But national vanity, we see, is certainly not confined to 
Germany. The Germans at least think France is highly 
self-conscious, always thinking of her dignity, glory, pres- 
tige and of revenge. Wundt (85) feels much the same 
about the English. He says they always want to be first 
in everything, and to dominate the earth. We know that 
the Confederacy of the United States, at the outbreak of the 
Civil War, appealed to the world on the ground that it had 
reached the most noble civilization the world had ever seen. 
The Japanese (73), we have heard, believe that they are 
of divine descent, and that they are supreme in manliness, 



Patriotism, Nationalism and National Honor 91 

loyalty and virtue. Every nation presumably has some- 
where in the back of its mind a belief in its own supremacy 
in something, and has a sense of being or having something 
that makes it unique in the world. 

We can now see in part how the idea of national honor 
arises out of the pride of nations. Certain fundamental 
feelings issue in the form of claims of superiority or su- 
premacy, which may be either vague and unclear or very 
definite and self-conscious. This claim to superiority is 
precisely what we mean by national vanity. With this con- 
sciousness there goes a knowledge that these claims are in 
general not recognized by other nations, or that the pres- 
tige which the recognition of this superiority presupposes is 
at least insecure. Since, of course, these claims to su- 
premacy cannot all be valid, there must be a great amount 
of inferiority parading in the world as superiority, many 
fictitious and presumably half-hearted assumptions that 
must not only be defended against outsiders, but must also 
be internally fortified. The pride and the conceit must be 
justified by the creation of a fictitious past, and of an im- 
possible future. The motive of these falsifications on the 
part of race consciousness is clear. A nation is defending 
its claim to superiority by first establishing the claim in its 
own mind. These claims being really unfounded must be 
placed beyond criticism. They must be given a religious 
form. But also external forms and relations of an artificial 
nature must be established. Nations always hide behind 
barriers of formality. They make displays to one another. 
In this way the feeling and the appearance of superiority 
are kept up. Everything external to the group and not 
participating in its illusion of supremacy must be kept ex- 
ternal to it. The belief which the nation itself assumes in 
regard to its virtue must be demanded from all outsiders 
with whom the nation has relations of any kind. At least 
the forms of the recognition of the claim must be insisted 
upon. This is the principle of national honor. It is a de- 



92 The Psychology of Nations 

fense of certain ideal or fictitious values in which nations 
insist that others should recognize these claims and values. 
National honor is an artifice for defending a claim to supe- 
riority and concealing an actual inferiority, and it relates 
to values which, in general, do not exist. Its work is con- 
cerned with the maintenance of prestige. 

These ideal values and the integrity of the appearance of 
supremacy, are sustained by the assumption of the forms of 
empire or the imperialistic attitude. Empire is indeed what 
is dramatized in the forms which nations assume, and this 
dramatization of imperial form is the background of all 
the ideas of honor. The maintenance of the integrity of 
the imperial form, as an ideal realization of the supremacy 
a nation assumes, becomes more important than even the 
securing of material possessions, for the imperial form is 
the very reality and existence of the nation. It is at bottom 
merely the assertion that its own mores are supreme and 
entitled to be universal. To admit that this is not so 
would be to become to some extent unreal, and to lose some- 
thing essential to a sense of personality. Therefore, there 
can be thus far no intimate relations among nations. They 
must present to one another symbolic representations of 
themselves. It is their flag, the symbol of their place in 
the world and of their military prowess and courage ; their 
ambassadors, the representatives of their dignity and the 
symbol of their pretended friendliness ; their display of royal 
forms, which is the sign of their prestige and their im- 
perial nature, about which they are most sensitive. Of- 
fenses to these symbols of what a nation assumes itself to 
be and demands that others should think it, tend to be 
mortal offenses, because they invade the sphere of what 
nations hold to be their reality. So the relations of nations 
to one another must, as we say, always be formal. Nations 
can allow no intimacy. Why they cannot one can readily 
see, for it is not difficult to detect the fear, the jealousy, 
and the inferiority motive behind all this assumption and 



Patriotism, Nationalism and National Honor 93 

display. Treitschke shows us what national honor may 
mean when it is carried out into a philosophy of state. 
Here is the idea of national self-consciousness at its greatest 
height. The state must not tolerate equals, or at least it 
must reduce the number of equals as much as possible. The 
state must be absolutely independent. The state, further- 
more, cannot have too keen a sense of its dignity and posi- 
tion. A state must declare war if its flag is insulted, how- 
ever slight the circumstances may be. 

National honor, its codes and standards and its justifica- 
tion and vindication by combat, present so many resem- 
blances to the practice of dueling and the idea of personal 
honor once so generally held by the upper class, and still 
existent where the military spirit prevails, that we ought 
to study the dueling code with reference to the psychology 
of war. There are psychological features that appear to 
be identical. The idea of personal honor is associated with 
a feeling of superiority that must be defended. Any of- 
fense or affront to the individual was a mortal offense. 
The superiority in question was first of all superiority of 
ancestry ; it was this that constituted the value of the indi- 
vidual and set the standards that he must maintain. This 
superiority was to be judged not so much by conduct as by 
an assertion of it represented by certain external forms. 
The individual by his manners declared himself a gentle- 
man, and laid claim to forms and considerations that must 
not be omitted in relations with him. The virtues he de- 
fended so rigorously did not exist as a rule in calculable 
or practical form, since they did nothing objective. They 
might be ornamental or purely fictitious. They existed in 
the form of claims, and the values assigned to them were 
arbitrary. The man declared himself possessed of supe- 
riority, and was ready uniformly to prove this claim by acts 
purporting to indicate willingness to die. 

This code and belief belonged to a day when relations 
among individuals were simple and, so to speak, external. 



94 The Psychology of Nations 

They were relations that were readily codified and made 
invariable, since they had no essential practical content or 
function. Manners were significant as substitutes for 
friendly relations, since the system was lacking in moral 
and social sentiments. Manners were a means of fitting 
together individuals who really belonged to no functioning 
whole, except when, for example, they might be united in 
military exploits. Everything was unitary and independent 
of everything else in this society. 

Now this code and this philosophy of life have declined 
precisely to the extent that the conception of ideal human 
life has changed, from that of something ornamental and 
personal to that of something useful and moral. Life has 
become organized, and relations have become more practi- 
cal, so that the values of conduct may now be estimated, and 
one no longer may maintain a claim to virtue based upon 
forms expressing intangible or subjective or unreal virtues. 
The virtues of a man in a democratic society are, indeed, 
more or less obvious and open. Pride of family, an orna- 
mental mode of life, and a scorn of death are no longer 
necessary and sufficient guarantees of worth. Evidence of 
value is both possible and required ; before value is admitted 
it must be shown. Self-defense in a legal and moral so- 
ciety are in the main superfluous, and the values of indi- 
viduals are so changed that to justify them by the duel would 
seem out of place. Its service being to defend artificial or 
arbitrary claims to distinction, it ceases or it falls into disuse 
when the individual's reality and value come to depend upon 
his functional place in society. It would be highly illogical 
to put to test social values by a process that appears to have 
nothing but anti-social elements in it. 

That nations exhibit the same type of relation toward 
one another that we find in dueling and its code seems to 
be clear, although we must always avoid pressing any anal- 
ogy between individual and nation too far. A claim to 
superiority that is deep and irrational, and which appears on 



Patriotism, Nationalism and National Honor 95 

the surface as sensitiveness in regard to honor and vanity, 
keeps nations always in defensive attitudes, quite apart from 
the actual fear of aggression. This superficiality or at least 
externality of relations is the source of actual conflict. The 
forms employed to maintain these relations are obviously 
ornamental, are elaborations of the forms of courtesy among 
individuals, are little dramas of friendship, so to speak, 
little plays representing friendliness, while the diplomatic 
motives are simply to obtain everything possible, each na- 
tion for itself, without war, and to maintain prestige. 
These relations are substitutes for social feelings that do not 
exist. Generally speaking, nations are never friends. 
They never really share in anything. They are all highly 
conscious of their own prestige and dignity, and they al- 
ways communicate with one another in a formal way. In 
it all, we see the signs of emotions and habits that extend 
far back to the beginnings of social life and indeed into 
animal life. The display which takes the form of social 
relations among nations, represented well by uniformed 
diplomats, is so plainly archaic and its real meaning so obvi- 
ous that we can hardly fail to understand what it is all about. 
That the attitude is really defensive, and the purpose to 
keep up appearances before strangers, so to speak, can 
hardly be doubted. 

The fact that these questions of national honor are in 
some respects detached from the main realities of political 
relations, and are, indeed, fictitious and exist in the re- 
gion of the imagination, that they pertain to the conven- 
tional and ornamental sides of national life, might be sup- 
posed to indicate that they could easily be done away with, 
and all these fertile causes of war be eliminated. That must 
not be assumed. Vanity has deep roots. The ornamental 
in life symbolizes the real. It is the point of entrance to 
the deepest motives. Conventional and archaic forms do 
not die out, just because we discover that they are irrational 
and harmful, and the causes they serve seem to us to be 



g6 The Psychology of Nations 

unreal. This kind of unreality in the consciousness of na- 
tions is in fact the ideal for which nations live. Nations 
play at being great, and fight to defend their prestige — but 
this play, as we know, is oftentimes terribly real. 



CHAPTER VI 

" CAUSES " AS PRINCIPLES AND ISSUES IN WAR 

The causes for which wars are fought, or which are as- 
serted to be the causes, make one of the important psycho- 
logical problems of war. Sometimes these causes are elu- 
sive, sometimes they may give occasion for cynicism and 
a pessimistic view of national morals ; again we see self- 
deception, again ideals seeking for light, peoples trying 
to find something to live for or to die for. We see in the 
recent great war as in other wars, a great variety of causes 
for which men are said to be fighting. Some would say 
that the war was entirely a war of principles; some take a 
purely political point of view and say that principles are not 
involved at all, and others that nothing was displayed at all 
of motives except primitive passions which are equally de- 
void of moral issues or any principles. 

It would be interesting from the psychological point of 
view to make, if possible, a complete collection and classi- 
fication of the causes that have been brought forward as 
the fundamental things fought for in the late war. Many 
widely different and divergent views are held. The forms 
in which the issues of the war have been stated are almost 
innumerable. New definitions and new statements of old 
conventional ideas appear continuously. Every writer 
seems to see the war from a different point of view from 
all others. Eventually, w r e may suppose, all this will be 
clear, since these " causes " of the war will be one of the 
great themes of future philosophical history. At present 
we can only formulate such a view as may be suggestive 

97 



98 The Psychology of Nations 

with reference to general interpretations of the place of 
principles and causes in war. 

Let us examine a few of the opinions about the issues 
fought for in the recent war. MacFall (56) says that the 
whole strategy of the civilized world is bent upon creating 
permanent peace. Many speak of the war as a war to over- 
come war; we are told that one of the most conscious mo- 
tives of the soldiers in the field has been to make the great 
war the last war the world should ever see. Something of 
the same idea is involved in the view each nation has that 
it was attacked, and that the purpose of the war was to 
defeat and punish aggressors. Apparently every nation 
and every army engaged in the war has had the feeling that 
it was fighting in the interests of world peace. 

The German explanations of the war and of its issues 
have been very numerous and widely varied. The German 
has had his own interpretation of the " white man's bur- 
den." Tower (57) calls attention to the German hybrid 
word " Sahibthum," expressing the mission of a people. 
Each nation has its essence, which becomes a deep impulse. 
The German's impulse is translatable in the words " Be 
organized." The German has been eager to organize the 
world. He believed in all seriousness that he was fighting 
the fight of order against chaos. It was the fight of the 
spirit against that which is dead and inefficient. The Ger- 
man believed that the systematic exploitation of the world 
was his peculiar mission. Ostwald is the great apostle of 
this view. He said that the war was a battle of the higher 
life against the lower instincts. Germany represents Euro- 
pean civilization. The German emperor said that Germany 
should do for Europe what Prussia had done for Germany 
— organize it. In the German philosophy of life this prin- 
ciple of order had become a serious principle. An ineffi- 
cient and disorderly world had need of Germany. Every- 
where there was waste and stupidity, and a want of reason 
in the world. System was to be the cure. The fundamen- 



" Causes " as Principles and Issues in War 99 

tal fault in all this disorder the German mind recognized as 
an excessive individualism. Individual instinct and the 
social order were in eternal conflict, as Dietzel expressed 
the issue, and Germany stood for the social order, for rea- 
son, since reason is precisely the denial of the instincts and 
the desires of the individual in the interest of a foreseen 
result. 

Shortly after the beginning of the war, we remember, a 
manifesto appeared signed by three thousand German uni- 
versity professors and other teachers, saying that they, the 
signers, firmly believed that the salvation of the whole of 
European civilization depended upon the victory of German 
militarism. Hintze (49) said that Germany was fighting 
for the freedom of everybody, meaning presumably accord- 
ing to the German principle that freedom consists in volun- 
tarily submitting to order. This freedom is also in Hintze's 
view a principle of freedom and equal rights for all nations, 
in so far as these nations have reached the necessary stage 
of civilization. The mission of the coming central manage- 
ment of mankind {Menschheitzentralverwaltung) implied in 
the most ideal theory of Germany's mission is the true Ger- 
man burden. Haeckel says that the work of the German 
people to assure and develop civilization gives Germany the 
right to occupy the Balkans, Asia Minor, Syria, and Meso- 
potamia, and to exclude from those countries the races that 
occupy them. Schellendorf says that Germany must not 
forget her civilizing task, which is to become the nucleus 
of a future empire of the west. Koenig says that the spir- 
itual life of Europe is at stake, Germany's fight is the fight 
of civilization against barbarism — against Russian bar- 
barism he means. This ought to be the cause of all West- 
ern Europe, but England and France have betrayed the 
western civilization into the hands of the East. This belief 
gave to Germany's cause a deep impulsion (12). 

Another way in which Germany's cause was frequently 
stated was that Germany was a pure, virile and young race 



ioo The Psychology of Nations 

which was fighting the older civilizations of the world. 
Vigor was assured of victory in any case, but young life 
had a duty to perform — that of clearing the way for new 
growth. This has found numerous forms of expression 
among German writers, some of them highly dramatic and 
exaggerated; as, for example, that the human race is di- 
vided into two species or kinds, the male and the female, 
assuming that the German is the male among the national 
spirits. 

With these views of the nature of the German ideal or 
cause there have gone, of course, interpretations of the 
conscious motives and principles of other nations. In gen- 
eral other nations had no principle. German writers have 
tended to believe that both England and America were 
hypocritical and that their pretended democratic cause was 
at heart only party and political aspiration. These nations, 
they said, claimed to desire the world to enjoy the rights of 
democracy, but each country assumed that it itself must be 
the controller of that democratic principle. Another fre- 
quently expressed view of the purposes of England and 
America is that they have purely sordid interests, that they 
are capable of fighting only for advantage and material gain. 

Many of these German views of the war imply a principle 
that runs through many fields of German thought — that 
values are something to be determined objectively. It is a 
scientific principle. Its conclusions rest upon proof, rather 
than upon subjective principles of valuation. There is 
another argument which is in part based upon an interpre- 
tation of scientific principles, but is in part also a fatalistic 
doctrine — confidence in the issues of battle as a means of 
testing the right and the validity of culture. The right 
will prevail, on this theory, because the right is the stronger 
or because in some sense strength is the right, and because 
the method of selection of the best by struggle is a basic 
principle, and may be applied to everything that is living or 
is a product of life. 



"Causes" as Principles and Issues in War 101 

If the German interpretation of the German cause has 
been dominated by an ideal of objective proof, we hear on 
the other side much about subjective rights and subjective 
evaluations — the right, for example, of every people to de- 
termine its own life, to have its own culture, to decide upon 
its own nationality. The Allies have believed that they 
were fighting to establish this principle throughout the 
world, and that this principle is diametrically opposed to 
the German principle. The thought of centralization, of a 
hierarchy of nations and the like, is wholly foreign to this 
democratic principle. Bergson (17) finds in the idea of in- 
dustry the cause of the war and the principle of opposition 
in it. The Allies, he says, have been fighting against ma- 
terialism with the forces of the spirit. Germany's forces 
are material. A mechanism is fighting against a self-re- 
newing spirit. The ideal of force is met by the force of 
the ideal. 

Boutroux (13) says that France, in the war, has had 
before her eyes the idea of humanity; France was fighting 
for the recognition of the rights of personality — rights of 
each nation to its own existence. France is a champion of 
freedom ; she wants all the legitimate aspirations of peoples 
to be realized. Germanism, with its ideal of force, is con- 
trasted with the ideal of Greek and Christian culture and 
philosophy. A cult of justice and modesty is contrasted 
with the cult of power; in the former, sentiment and feeling 
have a place as criteria of values ; in the latter the appeal 
is to science and to reason. 

Hobhouse (34) says that the war is a conflict of the 
spirit of the West against the spirit of the East (precisely 
the same as the German view, we see, but with a very dif- 
ferent identification of the champions). Germany has 
never felt the spirit of the West. The war is for some- 
thing far deeper than national freedom ; it is a war to justify 
the primary rules of right. Burnet (18) thinks that the 
great conflict was a conflict between Kultur as nationalistic, 



102 The Psychology of Nations 

and humanism as something international — that Germany, 
in recent years, had abandoned an ideal of culture for that 
of specialization in the service of the State. England's an- 
swer to the call was not to the specific need and appeal of 
Belgium, but because England felt that there was something 
in Germany incompatible with Western civilization. 

Le Bon (42) says that we must always remember that the 
Teuton is the irreconcilable enemy of the civilization of the 
French and of all it stands for, and that he must always 
be kept at a distance. Durkheim's view is that Germany's 
ambition and energy and will antagonize the freedom of the 
rest of the world, and the rest of the world felt this and 
the war was the consequence. Dillon (55) says that the 
future for which Germany has been striving is a future 
incompatible with those ideals which our race cherishes and 
reveres, and that we must make a definite choice between 
our philosophy and religion and our code on one side and 
those of the German on the other. Drawbridge (19) says 
that the war has been a conflict between the ideals of gen- 
tleness and tact, on one side, and of brutality and ruthless- 
ness on the other. It is the Christian spirit against the 
Nietzschean. 

Again we have been told that the war was simply a war 
of autocracy against democracy, of medievalism against 
modern life, of progress against stagnation, of militarism 
and war against peace, of the Napoleonic against the Chris- 
tian spirit. Occasionally we hear more personal and sub- 
jective notes. Redier (30) says that France was fighting 
solely to retain mastery of her own genius, in order to draw 
from it noble joys and just profits. 

The American point of view has been expressed in sev- 
eral forms by the President of the United States. For 
example, he has said that we are one of the champions of 
the rights of mankind. The world must be made safe for 
democracy. And again, that America is fighting for no 
selfish purpose, but for the liberation of peoples everywhere 



"Causes" as Principles and Issues in War 103 

from the aggression of autocratic powers. This view that 
the war was remedial, that it was in the interest of prog- 
ress, to prevent that which is belated in civilization from 
gaining the upper hand, and that it is on the part of Amer- 
ica a war of participation and aid in a cause which though 
supremely good might otherwise be lost, is the prevailing 
idea. That this spirit of the championship of causes and 
of justice to other nations is a stronger motive in the Anglo- 
Saxon peoples than in others appears to be an opinion that 
history on the whole can confirm. 

It is relatively easy to obtain the opinion of philosophers 
about the " causes " represented in the war; it would be of 
interest also to know what the millions of men in the field 
think. Data are not altogether wanting, but there appear 
to be no general studies. That many men, in more than 
one army, have no clear knowledge of any cause for which 
they have fought, except as these causes are nationalistic 
is certain. That there is ignorance even among the men 
of our own army in regard to the causes and purposes of 
the war has been made evident. Knowledge and enlighten- 
ment can hardly have been greater elsewhere. German sol- 
diers are credited with believing that they are defending 
Germany from attack. The French soldier was fighting 
for France. The invasion of his country left him no doubt 
and no choice. The English soldier has often said that 
he was doing it for the women and the children, and one 
writer says that the deepest motive of two thirds of the 
British army was to make this war the last. The American 
soldier, from the nature of the circumstances under which 
he himself entered the war has been more conscious of a 
motive of helpfulness and of comradeship with other peo- 
ples who are in distress and danger. Probably the idea of 
America's honor, and the more abstract idea still of the 
cause of freedom, even though this idea has been, so to 
speak, our watchword, have not been the most influential mo- 
tives in the mind of the individual. Germany was attack- 



104 The Psychology of Nations 

ing people who were in distress, and the American soldier 
went over to make the scales turn in the direction of victory 
for the oppressed. 

There is, of course, a literature of the war produced by 
the soldier in the field, in which there are expressed high 
ideals, abstract conceptions and firm principles. The 
French soldier has written about liberty, the German soldier 
has had considerable to say about a Kultur war. An Amer- 
ican volunteer in the British army has written, " I find my- 
self among the millions of others in the great allied armies 
fighting for all I believe right and civilized and humane 
against a power which is evil and which threatens the exist- 
ence of all the right we prize and the freedom we en- 
joy " (24). But in general the consciousness of the sol- 
dier, from all the evidence we have, was concerned, as pre- 
sumably was that of most of us, mainly with the most obvi- 
ous qualities of opposing forces, their concrete actions, and 
the personal motives of rulers. 

Leaving aside so far as one can one's own partisanship 
and mores (which is not a very easy task), what causes can 
we say, with a considerable degree of certainty, have actually 
been issues in the present war? To some extent what one 
thinks these causes are will remain matters of personal 
opinion and preference. Are there also principles which, 
when once observed, will be accepted as the fundamental 
"causes" of the war? There seem to be three at least 
which characterize wide differences in the ideals and the 
civilization of the opposing forces. 

There is, first of all, an issue between the ideals of a rela- 
tively autocratic form of government and a relatively more 
democratic form of government. This was a cause of the 
intellectuals, but it was also a popular cause. Men in gen- 
eral like the form of government under which they live. 
From the standpoint of those who hold that a democratic 
form of government is right, the war seemed to be a con- 
flict between a modern and progressive regime and an old 



"Causes " as Principles and Issues in War 105 

and vicious one. So far as this autocratic principle aimed 
to suppress the rights of individuals, or to menace the liber- 
ties of small nations, so far as it was aggressively mili- 
taristic and had imperial ambitions, which could be achieved 
only by force, it stood clearly opposed to democracy. De- 
mocracy and autocracy were plainly at war with one an- 
other, and yet if we look closely we shall see that neither 
one can offer any actual demonstration of its validity as the 
most superior or the final form of government. In part 
they may appeal to the observable course of history for 
their justification, but the final source of judgment seems to 
rest in the mass of opinion in the world. Questions of 
form and taste are not wholly absent. But the believer in 
democracy and the believer in autocracy will both assert 
that deep differences in principle are involved. They will 
not admit that democracy and autocracy are superficial 
forms, and are questions of taste, and they will not agree 
with Munsterberg, who says that the two forms tend in- 
evitably toward a compromise, by a process of alternation 
in which first one and -then the other is the dominant form 
in the world. 

The war, in another aspect of it, has been a conflict be- 
tween the idea of nationalism and that of internationalism. 
It is a conflict between an ideal of state, represented in the 
German philosophy of state by the principle of complete 
autonomy of the individual nation, and one which assumes 
that states, while retaining their rights of sovereignty are to 
be governed by laws which regulate their conduct as func- 
tioning members of a society of nations. The difference 
is that, relatively, between a state of anarchy among nations 
and a state of order. To some extent there has been a con- 
flict between the idea of rights and the idea of duties of 
nations. This internationalism is not merely a sociological 
principle, something academic and scientific, as a theory of 
state or society; it is an ethical principle, which contains 
some recognition of justice as a subjective principle. It 



io6 The Psychology of Nations 

has some roots in theory, but it is also based upon the imme- 
diate recognition of the rights of peoples to their own indi- 
vidual lives. Its ideal is a world containing many nations, 
coordinated by natural processes and not a world in which 
a single nation or a few may hold the supreme place, ex- 
cept as this supremacy might come by a process of natural 
development. 

The third conflict of the war was one which we may call 
a psychological conflict. It was a conflict between two 
ideas of life, one based upon a belief in the supremacy of 
reason, the other implying that the final test of values in 
life remains in the sphere of the feelings, or is a matter of 
appreciation. Germany, in her recent history, has stood 
conspicuously for the belief that human society may and 
indeed must be controlled and regulated by definite princi- 
ples — principles that must be determined according to the 
methods of science. These principles take the place, in this 
philosophy of life, of certain typical human reactions that 
are believed to be demonstrably irrational. In its visible 
and most practical form the application of this principle is 
through organization. 

This characterization of German life reveals something 
very much like a paradox in the principles of the war. We 
see a conflict in one direction between a certain medievalism 
in government and social forms and a more modern and 
progressive type ; we see also a conflict of a modernism of 
an extreme form, represented by a scientific civilization, 
united with this medievalism, and in opposition to a con- 
ception of life which is in some respects more naive and 
more primitive. The explanation of this paradox is that 
Germany offers an illustration of a phenomenon of develop- 
ment that has been seen before in history, of an excess of de- 
velopment and specialization in a direction that appears 
to be off the main line of progress, or at least is an 
anachronism. Germany has shown us the effects of ra- 
tionalism, some would say a morbid and hypertrophied 



"Causes" as Principles and Issues in War 107 

reason. This rationalism is certainly in part a product of 
systematic education and propaganda, a conscious exploita- 
tion of science, and it is in part temperamental. Such a 
result is always possible in a small state with a highly cen- 
tralized form of government. It is a notorious fact that 
Germany's type of civilization can be spread neither by 
persuasion nor by force. If we may apply a biological 
analogy we may say that German Kultur in its modern form 
cannot survive. That this German civilization has been felt 
by the world at large to be abnormal and of the nature of a 
monstrosity we can hardly doubt, and that therefore to some 
extent there has been a sense, on the part of the enemies of 
Germany, of fighting to root out a dangerous and rank 
growth. Germany, seeing in her own civilization only the 
appearance of modernism, has been inclined to regard all 
other civilizations as decadent. 

Germany, governed by the ideals of rationalism, has as- 
sumed that history can be made, wars conducted, life regu- 
lated in accordance with a program. On the other side 
we see a very general acceptance of a philosophy of life 
in which many evils of disorder and waste and the necessity 
of an experimental attitude toward life are accepted as nec- 
essary consequences of the life of freedom. We see implied 
in this philosophy of life a belief in a morality and a reli- 
gion that are based upon feeling rather than upon objective 
evidences, and a way of judging conduct more or less naively 
and simply or according to methods of appreciation that are 
essentially aesthetic, using the term in a wide sense. This 
mode of life is accepted in the belief that order in due sea- 
son will come out of relative disorder, by a natural process 
or by a gradually increasing organization and voluntary 
adjustment. If we accept the validity of this attitude in 
life we shall be inclined to regard rationalism as it is mani- 
fested to-day in German life as an evil. We may believe 
that in the end the cure for this rationalism will not be less 
reason but rather more, but we shall see also that it is pos- 



108 The Psychology of Nations 

sible for reason to outstrip and pervert life, and indeed in- 
volve life in an absurdity, simply because as a method of 
dealing with the whole of life it cannot be sufficiently com- 
prehensive. 

Are these and all such issues that we find in war, causes 
of war? Do nations fight for principles? Opinions cer- 
tainly differ on this point. Some think of wars, we say, 
as essentially conflicts of principles; some interpret wars 
wholly in terms of political issues. We should say that 
the truth lies between these assertions or is the sum of their 
half-truths. Wars are not in their origin wars of princi- 
ple. The political, the personal, the concrete aspects of the 
relations of nations are always in the foreground in causing 
wars. Wars become wars of principle after they have been 
begun for other reasons. Sanctions and motives appear 
after the fact. Fundamental differences of mores which 
include the raw material, so to speak, of principles and 
causes are factors in wars in so far as they create misunder- 
standing and antipathy, but in so far as these differences of 
nature and of principle do not enter into the sphere of 
politics and of national honor, they do not as such cause 
wars. Those deep moods which accumulate in the minds 
of peoples and enter into the causes of war are not convic- 
tions about principles. They are more generic and natural. 
History does not seem to show us wars caused by pure 
principles. We sometimes say that the Civil War in our 
own country was fought over a principle, but that is some- 
thing less than the truth. The fundamental question at 
issue was plainly that of the rights of certain states at a 
particular time to be independent and free. 

Principles emerge in war, we say, and then they become 
secondary causes. And it is precisely this emergence of 
principles from fields of battle that perhaps constitutes the 
greatest contribution of wars to the civilization of the 
world. We need to reflect upon this deeply, since the whole 
philosophy of history is concerned in it. The virtues that 



" Causes " as Principles and Issues in War 109 

nations discover in themselves in war they elaborate in 
peace. Nations at war become conscious of their spiritual 
possessions. Since their existence, they believe, is at stake, 
it is a part of their self-defense to justify their value in the 
world. They discover in themselves that which is most 
characteristic of them, and this becomes their principle. 
The principle of a nation is that which the national con- 
sciousness fixates itself upon as the title of the nation to 
continued existence. Nations do not go to war over their 
causes, or about their distinctive virtues and missions in 
the world. Rather it is their likenesses that precipitate 
wars, — their resemblances and identities in being the same 
in ambition, and having the same conceptions of national 
honor and the same motives for war and desiring the same 
objects. Nations in general do not go to war over prin- 
ciples because they are not motivated by principles in their 
historical course. The principles of nations are aspects of 
their inner development. The " causes " of nations at war, 
according to our view, are these inner qualities of which 
they have become conscious. Nations discover them in the 
stress of war, and it is quite natural also that in such times 
they should not always judge them fairly, and that they 
should often make for themselves a fictitious character. 



CHAPTER VII 

PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCES 

Philosophy, in the minds of many writers, must be given 
a high place among the causes of war, and a considerable 
fraction of the literature of the late war is devoted to the 
problem of discovering, in the field of abstract thought, the 
influences that led to the great conflict. Nietzsche, espe- 
cially, seems to have been held responsible for the European 
conflagration. As the philosopher of the New Germany, as 
the chief expositor of the doctrine of force, the inventor 
of the super-man and of the idea of the beyond-good, 
Nietzsche seems to stand convicted of furnishing precisely 
the concepts that have become the German's gospel of war; 
and since the German is prone to be guided by abstractions, 
the evidence, even though circumstantial, seems to many to 
be convincing. 

Schopenhauer, also, as the great pessimist ; Hegel, with 
his doctrine of the supremacy of the State as the representa- 
tive of the Idea on earth ; Kant, as the discoverer of the 
subjective moral principle; English utilitarianism as the 
doctrine of the main chance; empiricism, as the philosophy 
of inconsistency and dual principles of thought and con- 
duct; even the whole spirit of the English philosophy, which 
Wundt says is nothing but an attempt to reconcile thought 
with the ideas of peace and comfort — all these have been 
charged with being instigators of the war. 

Bergson (17) takes a different view. He says that the 
desire comes first, the doctrine afterwards. Germany, de- 
termined upon war, invokes Nietzsche or Hegel. Germany 
in a moral temper would appeal to Kant, or in still a differ- 



Philosophical Influences 1 1 1 

ent mood to the Romanticists. Le Bon (42) says that na- 
tions are pushed forward by forces which they cannot un- 
derstand, and that rational thoughts and desires play but 
a little part in war. That appears to be true. We can- 
not say that philosophies do not enter at all into the causes 
of -war, but among these causes they must be insignificant 
as compared with other causes that neither arise from ab- 
stract thought nor are greatly modified by reason in any 
way. Consider the influence of Napoleon (himself so little 
a product of any philosophical influence), as compared with 
Hegel; or of Bismarck as compared with Nietzsche, and 
this will be apparent. There are in the course of the cen- 
turies books and men that, as rational forces, do exert pro- 
found effect upon the practical life, but they must be rarer 
than is sometimes supposed. It is all too easy to assume 
a relation of cause and effect when there is only a similarity 
between thought and subsequent conduct. Rousseau may 
or may not have inspired the French Revolution. Probably 
he did not. The recent great war, we might say, has oc- 
curred in spite of philosophy, and if Nietzsche's influence 
gravitated toward war, it can hardly be thought to have 
had any deciding force in turning the scales already so over- 
loaded by fate. Philosophy failed to prevent war. 
Nietzsche's philosophy did not cause it. His philosophy 
affords a convenient phraseology in which to express a 
philosophy of war, granting sufficient misinterpretation of 
his philosophy. Probably w r hat influence he has had has 
been due rather to his literary impressiveness than to his 
thought as a contribution to philosophy. 

Darwin, as the great force behind a new and varied de- 
velopment of science, has had the fate to be, in some sense, 
a factor in the moods and the new habits of life that led 
toward the final issue in the great war. It is not so much 
that his principle, misapplied, or applied uncritically may 
become a justification of war or even its basic principle 
that has made him so great an influence, but precisely be- 



ii2 The Psychology of Nations 

cause his thought, by becoming one of the great coordinat- 
ing principles of all the natural sciences has given power 
to a movement which has had various practical consequences, 
not all of them good, or at least not all yielding fruit for 
our own age. Darwin's great influence as a force turning 
scholarly interest toward naturalism and away from classi- 
cism, as a factor in modern materialism and even pessimism, 
as a background, if no more, for the Haeckels and Ostwalds 
of science is no inconsiderable factor in the scientific and 
objective spirit of the day. 

Facts must be faced. It is not such influences as that 
of Schopenhauer, who expresses a logical or at least an 
abstract and we might add literary form of pessimism, that 
in the generations just past have transformed most of the 
conceptions of religion, with all the effects upon the practical 
life that have followed, but the force of our modern science 
combining with tendencies which it fosters but perhaps does 
not create, giving momentum to industrialism and specializa- 
tion, — it is this change in the ideas of men that we must 
suspect of being implicated in the present catastrophe of the 
world, if any influence from the rational life is to be counted 
at all. Hegel and Kant hover in the background. The 
author of the plan for universal peace provides us with 
a subjective principle of morality which can be distorted 
into a philosophy of moral independence and even of in- 
dependence from morality, and Hegel must have helped to 
establish the German theory of the State, although with 
Treitschke and with the practical state-makers like Fred- 
erick the Great and his followers, we can hardly believe 
Hegel indispensable. The causes of war are too general, too 
old and too fundamental to be greatly added to or de- 
tracted from as yet by philosophy. Philosophy is the hope 
of the world, it may be, and by no means a forlorn hope, 
but it is not yet one of the great powers. When philosophy 
is a mere endorsement by reason of some motive that has 
arisen in the practical life, or is a literary expression of 



Philosophical Influences 113 

views about life, it may give the appearance of being a 
profound force in the world. But this is not real philoso- 
phy, in any case. Philosophy has not as yet shown itself 
highly creative even in the calm fields of education and the 
moral life. 

No! Philosophy is a factor in the motives of war rather 
by reason of what it has not done, than because of its 
positive teachings. To-day we ought no longer to be un- 
der illusions on that point. Neither Christianity nor 
philosophy can make or prevent wars as yet. They have 
not been able to cope with the practical forces of the 
world which make for nationalism, partisanship and per- 
sonal interests. It would require a greater amount both of 
religion and of philosophy than we now can bring to bear 
upon the world to offset the influence of Napoleon alone in 
the practical life of nations. It is the Napoleonic spirit 
that still governs Europe. Philosophy has been thus far a 
science of being an explanation of the world after the 
fact, and not even to any great extent a science of its 
progress, except in so far as, we may say, beginning with 
Hegel and with Spencer, there has been some develop- 
ment of the methods and the most formal conceptions of 
such a science. It is asking too much of philosophy, in its 
present stage, to expect it to preach the gospel, or to teach 
school, or to direct politics, and for the same reason it is 
unjust to charge philosophy with having created the great- 
est catastrophe of history. If philosophy cannot wield 
any great power now in those parts of life that are by 
their nature presumably most amenable to reason, its effect 
upon those events that express the supreme force of human 
passions and the totality of life will not be very important. 
The influences of philosophy are academic, and presumably 
any doctrine of life that preaches achievement, virility and 
immorality will include in some degree war among the in- 
terests that it will affect, within the limits of its academic 
nature. But youth is inherently warlike, because above 



H4 The Psychology of Nations 

everything else it seeks to realize life in its fullness, and war 
at least does symbolize this reality and abundance of life. 
A philosophy which preached peace would hardly become a 
great influence with youth. A philosophy advocating the 
cause of war would form a natural background for the es- 
sential motives of youth. If the scales were evenly bal- 
anced, it might turn them. It is hard at least to see the 
relations of philosophy to the practical life in any other 
light to-day. Philosophies are tenuous and adaptable 
things. We see them used to support opposite causes, and 
they change color under the influence of strong desires. 
Bosanquet (91) shows us how Hegel's noble conception 
of the State, if we but substitute for its central thought of 
welfare of the State, that of selfish interest, may be made 
to change before our eyes into the meanest of maxims. 
This process is, however, not unique in the history of the 
relations of thought and life. 

A detailed study of the relations of intellectual factors 
to war would need to consider the effects of a great number 
of more or less philosophical ideas which throw their weight 
on the side of war. So far as these ideas are simple and 
clear, and especially if they can be conveyed in the form of 
the phrase, their influence cannot wholly be ignored. Some 
we have already referred to. The doctrine that might 
makes right, the conception of state as supreme, the belief 
in the divine right of kings, the belief in the ordained rights 
of aristocracy, belief in militarism as a social institution, 
the doctrine that life may be controlled by reason, all in- 
tellectual pessimism, skepticism, any form of concept-wor- 
ship, whether Hegelian or other, acceptance of the methods 
of science and the results of science as applicable to all 
the problems of life — all such principles which inhabit the 
region, so to speak, between philosophy and the practical life 
manifestly have some relation to the spirit of war. In a 
very general way they may be counted as philosophical 
factors in war. For the most part, however, those ideas 



Philosophical Influences 115 

that have been accused of abetting war are exaggerations 
and perversions of philosophical ideas. Nietzsche, Darwin 
and Hegel have all been exploited and made to stand sponsor 
for specific philosophies of war. In the new philosophy of 
life which Patten thinks has greatly influenced German con- 
duct, and which may be expressed in the words Dienst, 
Ordnung, and Kraft, we can see both the effects of impulses 
that have grown out of the new life itself, and the influences 
of formal philosophy. That such ideas have had relatively 
a greater influence in Germany than elsewhere must be ad- 
mitted, but that either this devotion to ideas or the ideas 
themselves have been derived from philosophical interests 
and from philosophies that have played any important part 
in the history of thought we may well doubt. We should 
suspect that the same practical interest that works unceas- 
ingly to distort and popularize philosophy would help to 
create such pseudo-philosophy. 

Von Biilow (65) says that the German people have a 
passion for logic, and that this passion amounts to fanati- 
cism : — that when an intellectual form or system has been 
found for anything, they insist with obstinate perseverance 
on fitting realities into the system. Durkheim (16) says 
that the Germans' organized system of ideas is a cause of 
war. It is also true, we should say, that the tendency to 
organize ideas and even the fundamental ideas by which 
the Germans have been guided are deeply rooted in tem- 
perament, in history and in the social order of the past. 
Boutroux (13) says that the Germans themselves regard 
the war as the culmination of their philosophy. We should 
say on the contrary that the whole war philosophy of Eu- 
rope is almost wholly a product of strife and comes from 
impulses that arise irresistibly in the practical life. Into 
these movements philosophy fits or may be made to fit, 
and the presence of ideas in a society in which the academic 
life has great prestige, ideas which coincide with beliefs 
readily gives an illusion of an order governed by the higher 



n6 The Psychology of Nations 

reason. The fact that Germany's recent wars had all 
been highly successful, the fact that Germany had learned 
to depend upon her good sword in time of need are the 
chief sources of Germany's doctrines of war: the Hegelian 
background in the light of what we have learned in recent 
times about the psychology of nations, must seem to be 
rather of the nature of the ornamental. The ideal of the 
Prussian State to be a power directed by intelligence sug- 
gests Hegel, but it seems highly improbable, to say the least, 
that Hegelian philosophy has had much to do with shaping 
this ideal. Behind all this is the necessity of shaping 
German life in the form which it has taken — necessity if 
we accept, at least, Germany's national temperament itself as 
a necessity. That other belief, widely held by German in- 
tellectuals and officers that war is the testing of the validity 
of national cultures would also probably never have ap- 
peared on the scene had not Germany been secure in the 
belief that she herself had both the right and the might 
on her side. It is possible, of course, that the war has dis- 
torted our vision so that the relations of the practical life 
and the life of reason have all been thrown out of focus, 
but when we see what forces have been at work, and what 
they have done, it is difficult to escape the conviction that 
we have been inclined to believe too much in the power of 
mere ideas. This may be the great lesson of the war. We 
may learn from it how to make ideas become the power that 
hitherto they have failed to be. 



CHAPTER VIII 

RELIGIOUS AND MORAL INFLUENCES 

That war and religion have always been closely asso- 
ciated with one another is one of the outstanding facts of 
history. This is true both of primitive warfare and of 
warfare to-day. Yet we cannot say that religion as such 
has been a cause of war. Religious wars are almost in- 
variably also political wars, and as soon as religion and 
politics are separated, religion no longer appears to be a 
war motive. When religion becomes associated with 
worldly ideas which it supports and makes dynamic it may 
become a strong factor in the spirit of war, but as a means 
of segregating men, and giving them unity of action religion 
can no longer be regarded as a power, if it ever was. Any 
motive that will not so segregate men and break up all 
other bonds cannot be said to be a very fertile cause of war. 
Religion as a cause of war belongs to a day in which the 
spirit of nationalism was weak, and when religious empire 
had a visible and political position in the world. National- 
ism, growing stronger, became the supreme force dominat- 
ing the motives and interests of men and governing the 
formation of groups, or at least the actions of groups as 
interrelated units. In the recent war we have seen how 
the sense of national unity has been able to hold in check 
all other motives. Neither religion nor any class or clan 
or guild interests could trace the faintest line of cleavage so 
long as the motive of war remained. 

The mood of war always contains a religious element. 
Not only is this shown in primitive wars, where the rela- 
tions of religion, war and art are indicated in such phenom- 

117 



1 1 8 The Psychology of Nations 

ena as the war dance, which is of the nature of a magic 
weapon, but we see it also in the complex moods of the 
present war spirit of the world. The idea and mood of 
valor have a religious significance. Cramb says that we 
can trace in Germany before the war, showing through the 
transient mists of industrialism and socialism, the vision of 
the religion of valor which runs through all German his- 
tory. The craving for a valorous life, for reality, the de- 
sire to lose one's own individuality — these moods of war 
are religious or mystic whatever else they may be or con- 

/tain. The inseparable relation of war and death necessar- 
ily inspires a religious consciousness. Without exalted 
moods which in some way contain religious faith — faith on 
the part of the individual in the eternal values which he 
represents and in his own security in the hands of fate, and 
in the immortality of the country which he serves, war could 
not exist. 

The mood of war always contains a religious sanction, 
and every important religion sanctions war. This explicit 
relation between religion and war is seen very early. 
Wherever there is ghost worship, and the warriors justify 
war and fortify themselves for it by believing that their 
ancestors still participate in the combats of their children, 
and that in waging war they are doing a duty in keeping 
up the traditional feuds of their race there is found the 
root of the relation between war and religion. Every war 
is a holy war; it is but a change in degree from these primi- 
tive wars in which the ideas of ghosts must have had al- 
most the clearness of reality to our modern wars with 
their deeper but more indefinite religious sanctions. Since 
war always creates the need of moral justification, the 
war mood at all times tends to seek religious sanctions. 
Christianity, the doctrine of peace and good will, very 
readily lends its support to war, since wars are almost 
invariably regarded as defensive by all who participate in 
them. War in the service of the weak and endangered 



Religious and Moral Influences 119 

can always invoke the spirit of Christianity. The logical 
ground for this has been laid for us by many writers ; 
Drawbridge (19), one of the most recent, finds no support 
in Christianity for the doctrines of pacifism. All nations, 
when they fight, fight for God, for liberty and the right, 
with the implied belief that their own country has a mission 
in the world, supported by divine authority. 

All governments have in them a strain of theocracy. 
We see this in many degrees and forms, from the original 
totemistic belief in descent from animals that are also gods 
to the vaguest remnants of the habit of interpreting na- 
tional interests as guarded by divine powers that we often 
see in the language of practical statesmen. The doctrine 
of the divine rights of kings of course had its origin in 
that of divine descent. The most striking revelation of 
the place such theories may have, even in modern times 
and in enlightened nations, is to be seen in the revival and 
deliberate use of the doctrine of divine descent as a funda- 
mental principle of the government and theory of State 
in the New Japan. All nations hold something of this 
philosophy ; God and State are always related and all wars, 
whatever else they may be, are waged in the service of re- 
ligion and with the sanction of it. This spirit is not want- 
ing even in the most modern democracy. The historians of 
Germany have shown us to what an extent the theory of 
the divinity of state and its divine mission may be inter- 
mingled with practical politics and have helped to bring 
to light the psychology of this movement in history. 

Several writers, but especially Le Bon (42), have written 
about the relation of mysticism to war. Le Bon said indeed 
that the main causes of war, including the most recent 
one, are mystical causes. By mysticism he means un- 
conscious factors which are religious in quality and which 
contain a race ideal which is both powerful and irrational. 
German mysticism appears to have attracted much atten- 
tion during the years of the war. Germany has presented 



120 The Psychology of Nations 

the picture, we are told, of a people becoming dangerous 
by couching national ambition and honor in terms of re- 
ligion. ' This mysticism of the German contains a power- 
ful belief in race superiority, and in the supremacy of the 
culture of their own nation, beliefs which have the clear 
marks of mysticism about them. The traces of the theory 
of divine origin still cling to them. Boutroux (13) says 
the Prussian State is a synthesis of the divine and the 
human. Another writer observes that the Germans be- 
lieve in the altogether unique and quasi-divine excellence of 
the German race, and of Germanism, and that the Germans 
have a new religion which they believe in spreading by the 
sword. Some see in Germany a serious demand for the 
revival of. the religion of Odin and Thor, the religion of 
conflict of primeval forces, and of the triumph of might. 
Literary expressions of this religion are certainly to be 
found, and it may fairly be maintained that Germany has 
never become Christianized to the extent that most modern 
nations have. 

That mysticism has been a large factor in the war spirit 
of the Germans in the late war can hardly be doubted, or 
at least that a religious element of some kind has played 
a great part in it. The war began as Germany's holy war. 
A cult of State and of self-worship are involved in it. If 
not, innumerable expressions of Germany's cause among 
German writers are simply literary exaggerations. The 
Germans have believed that they are God's chosen people, 
that they represent God, and since the German civilization 
grew up in antagonism to the Graeco-Roman civilization, 
God must have adopted the one and discarded the other. 
One German writer says that we .must eliminate from our 
belief the last drop of faith in the idea of a progressive 
movement of humanity as a whole. Reality is represented 
in one nation at a time, and the chosen nation is the leader 
of all the rest. 

While such mysticism as this (if it be mysticism) is most 



Religious and Moral Influences ill 

conspicuous in aristocratic and imperialistic nations, we 
find it elsewhere. It is a powerful force in imperialistic 
Japan and in Russia. We find it everywhere in history in 
some form. In France it is still the " saintly figure " of 
France that inspires the soldier and induces a religious 
mood. There is no longer a vision of an empire of the 
future, perhaps, and this mysticism of France has not in 
recent history shown itself in the form of aggression, but 
French mysticism clings to the ideal and the hope of a 
glorious future for a deathless France soon to be renewed. 
All peoples that have declined 01; suffered an adverse fate, 
even the pathetic remnants of the American Indians, expect 
the return of their lost power. Such mysticism is, we may 
think, the only condition under which national life in many 
cases can continue. The religious or the mystical mood 
of nations is created by the need of making belief dynamic, 
of overcoming doubts and fears. Hence the exaggerated 
and irrational claims peoples make in regard to the value 
of their culture and about their mission on earth. By their 
mysticism nations justify their aggressive wars and fortify 
themselves in their defensive wars. Thus nations acquire 
a feeling of security. They believe in their star of destiny. 
They feel that their life which is of supreme value to the 
world cannot perish. It is this spirit that nations take with 
them into battle. It is a mystic force, and this mystic force 
is, in great part, we may believe, one of the by-products 
of the tragedy of history. Faith and hope have one of 
their roots at least in fear and pessimism. 

Moral Motives and War 

That the attitude of nations toward one another is not, 
generally speaking, an ethical attitude and that moral prin- 
ciples do not motivate the conduct of peoples we have al- 
ready suggested. Sumner (70) says that the whole history 
of mankind is a series of acts open to doubt, dispute and 



122 The Psychology of Nations 

criticism as to their right and justice. Differences end in 
force, and the defeated side always protests that the re- 
sults are unjust. And yet wars are always conducted with 
moral justification and in the belief that moral principles are 
involved. These moral principles, however, are not the 
points of difference upon which the beginning of wars de- 
pends. Nations never go to war for purely moral reasons. 
Moral feeling may coincide with the interests of state, and 
a defensive war may of course be conducted in the spirit of 
deep moral right and duty, but plainly it is never the sense of 
right and duty alone that is the motive of defense. Perhaps 
after all this question of the moral element in the causes 
of war is a futile one, and leads to casuistry. There are 
always political and other practical questions involved, 
whenever strain occurs between nations, so that wholly 
moral issues can never arise. 

If wars are not moral in the making they are always 
justified morally, whatever the motives may have been 
that caused them. Without this moral sanction it is doubt- 
ful whether wars could be conducted at all, although this 
moral sanction may be based upon very superficial grounds. 
The higher patriotic feeling runs, says Veblen (97), the 
thinner may be the moral sanction that satisfies the public 
conscience. On the other hand moral sentiment may often 
be strong and deep in the minds of the masses of people 
in a nation, and the public feeling of obligation to enter a 
war may be strong, but in general such moral feeling does 
not lead to war. Righteous indignation lacks initiative. 
Honor as moral obligation requires the aid of honor as na- 
tional pride and dignity. The relations among allies may 
at first thought seem to be moral relations, but when we 
observe closely we see that usually nations go to war 
together because their common interests are endangered. 
When their common interests are not involved they usually 
break treaties and so do not stay together. Actions di- 
rected offensively against one member of a coalition are 



Religious and Moral Influences 123 

usually directed against the others, so that in most cases 
the allies of a nation have no choice, but must defend them- 
selves. 

The relative importance of moral principles in the mo- 
tives of war may be observed by comparing the motives 
assigned by the nations that participated in the late war with 
the motives which a study of the history and political sit- 
uations of these countries reveals. There are wide dis- 
parities between these historical causes and the assigned 
causes. These need not, however, lead us to take a cynical 
view of history as many sociologists and students of politics 
do. We have as yet no organized world in which moral 
principle can operate. The world, we might say, is still 
infantile or immature. The world is still unmoral. We 
cannot say that nationalism as the principle of the conduct of 
nations is a wholly selfish principle as contrasted with a 
moral or altruistic motive, since such an analogy with in- 
dividual morality fails to take into account the complex 
nature of nationalism, and overlooks the social qualities 
of patriotism. 

England's purpose in entering the war has been freely 
discussed in England. The popular impression is that 
England declared war upon Germany in order to defend 
Belgium and to keep her treaty obligations. If we con- 
sider conduct in a certain abstraction from the practical 
setting in which it is performed such a conclusion can be 
drawn. There was a moral stirring in England, and sev- 
eral writers have commented upon the fact that England 
subverted her own conscious purposes by her unconscious 
and instinctive morality. There was a strong feeling 
against war, even a widespread moral sense that England 
had become too civilized to wage war. There was a 
shrinking from the economic hardships that war would 
entail. Against these strong tendencies there prevailed, at 
least in popular sentiment, a profound feeling that in some 
way Germany's civilization was incompatible with Eng- 



124 The Psychology of Nations 

land's, and this feeling was in part of the nature of moral 
aversion. Dillion (55), at least, sees a profound ethical 
motive in Italy in the late war. After a pro-German party- 
had won out in favor of war, he says, a deus ex machina in 
the shape of an indignant nation descended upon the scene. 
But after making allowance for all moral feeling and the 
unusual and dramatic manner in which moral issues, to a 
greater degree than ever before in modern history, were 
brought to the front, we must admit that the political and 
diplomatic interests and manners of nations have taken 
their usual course in the war. Nations have been governed 
by the motives that have always dominated the relations of 
groups to one another. 

Germany presents the most glaring example of the con- 
trast between public opinion and expressed motives and 
political facts. Such expressions as these : that Germany's 
ideal is one that does violence to no one; that humanity 
and all human blessings stand under the protection of Ger- 
man arms ; that, where the German spirit obtains supremacy, 
there freedom reigns ; that in regard to England's down- 
fall, there can be but one opinion — it is the very highest 
mission of German culture ; that Germany's war is a holy 
war — such expressions as these, which are psychologically 
explicable without questioning their sincerity, seem out 
of harmony, to say the least, with what we know of Ger- 
many's political aspirations. Germany's desire for Eng- 
land's downfall does not appear to us to be based upon a 
moral motive ; Germany's war seems far from being a holy 
war, and it is hard to see in it a means of spreading cul- 
ture abroad in the world. We cannot give any place in 
the causes of this war to a moral desire to make the world 
better. However much Germany may have been convinced 
that Germany was destined to be a civilizing force in the 
world, the moral obligation thus aroused, we may be sure, 
did not become the real motive of the war. 

The moral justifications of war are very numerous, 



Religious and Moral Influences 125 

and that this belief in war has some effect upon the spirit 
of war and helps to perpetuate it, and is not a mere reflection 
of the warlike spirit itself, may of course be admitted. 
Many believe that war accomplishes work in the world; 
war is a great organizing force. There is also a view that 
war is good as a moral stimulant, or as a creative moral 
force. War is often regarded as the means of moral re- 
vival of a people that has become sordid and dull. Schmitz 
(29) says that war gives reality to a country. War 
strengthens national character, some think. It purges na- 
tions. In war people grow hard but pure. Irwin (25) 
says that such war philosophy as this is to be heard broadly 
in Europe, chiefly in Germany, but also in France and in 
England. Mach (95) says that disintegration takes place 
in times of peace. Schoonmaker says that war has taught 
men socialization. Again we hear that wars are just and 
right because they are necessary. Redier (30) says that 
war is a way of giving back courage to the men of our 
times. This praise of war which comes from the depths 
of feelings, we must suppose helps to give continuity and 
force to these feelings. 

Institutional Factors 

If the spirit of war is to any extent educable, and is 
created in national life and is not merely something in- 
stinctive, it is presumably modified in one way and an- 
other by all those institutions that are educational in their 
effect. Perhaps one of the most pressing problems of edu- 
cation in the near future will be that of the relation of edu- 
cation to war. We shall need to know what the school 
has done to cause wars, what changes should be made in 
the future with reference to this influence of education upon 
the fundamental motives of national life. The school- 
master has been indicted among other instigators of war. 
We must see how much truth there is in this allegation. 
We must understand also how the whole educational process, 



126 The Psychology of Nations 

as we may see it now after the war, may be made if possible 
to become a greater factor in life than it has been in the 
past, if it is at all an important element in the development 
and the control of the psychic powers of nations. 

Schmitz (29) says that the eighteenth century and the 
French Revolution were dominated by the phrase, the nine- 
teenth by money, and that there was a danger that the twen- 
tieth century would be dominated by the schoolmaster and 
by the concept, but that this danger is past because life 
has become so full of realities. Russell says, we know, that 
men fight because they have been governed in their beliefs 
and in their conduct by authority. If this be true the au- 
thority exercised upon the mind of the child by all his teach- 
ers may be suspected of having been in one way or an- 
other an influence in creating the moral attitudes that pre- 
vail in regard to war and peace. We have heard the ques- 
tion raised as to whether in the past the teaching of history 
as the story of wars, and the presentation of the facts of 
history from the nationalistic point of view, have not been 
morally wrong. 

German schools, and the method of public education the 
sinister effects of which we have abundantly felt — that 
is, the propaganda, show us educational phenomena that 
are psychologically of great interest and which are also 
unique from the educational point, of view. The influence 
of schools seems in general so negative, and there is so 
little connection between what is learned as fact and conduct 
in the practical life that, even in the case of the German 
teaching of war philosophy we must suspect that this teach- 
ing has been successful only because it has gone with the 
strong tide of feeling in the popular mind. That the Ger- 
man schools have directly and indirectly fostered the de- 
velopment of ideas that lead in the direction of war there 
is no doubt. Even more influential than the specific ideas 
that have been implanted, is the spirit of these schools: 
it is their militaristic and routine life, the great authority 



Religious and Moral Influences 127 

assumed by the teacher, the specialization, that has helped 
to nourish the warlike spirit of Germany, quite as much 
as the fact, for example, that Daniel's Geography teaches 
that Germany is the heart of Europe, surrounded by coun- 
tries that were once a part of Germany and will be again. 
German education, we say, seems to be unique in the 
extent to which it influences public sentiment and national 
conduct. In general, education has appeared among the in- 
fluences that lead to war rather by default of positive teach- 
ing than by anything positive it has done. Even in Ger- 
many, we should say, the spirit of war has been made to 
flourish less by the teaching of a narrow nationalism, by 
inculcating hatred, and implanting wrong conceptions of 
German history than by failing to provide youth with means 
of deep satisfaction, by failing to coordinate deep de- 
sires of the individual, and to organize individuals in a 
normal social life. This is true everywhere. Education 
has not affected life as a whole, and it has not thus far 
been an influence which, to any appreciable extent, has ac- 
celerated the development of peoples in their especially 
national aspects and relations. It has nowhere fostered 
any conception of the whole world as an object of social 
feeling. It has everywhere accepted a certain provincialism 
as natural and necessary, and has tacitly assumed that na- 
tional boundaries are the horizon of the practical life of 
the child. The school has in fact failed to take advantage 
of its unmatched opportunity to use the imagination of the 
child to develop his social powers. Sociologists say that if 
sociologists had been more diligent in spreading abroad 
information about the social life, the great war would 
perhaps never have happened. That we may certainly 
doubt; something more profound must be done by educa- 
tion than to disseminate knowledge, if it would undertake 
to be a power in the world and to do anything more than 
add its influence to the tendencies of the day, or perhaps 
temporarily change the direction of these tendencies. 



CHAPTER IX 

ECONOMIC FACTORS AND MOTIVES 

Thus far we have considered the motives of war mainly 
from the psychological point of view, discovering its main 
movement and development in the world to be a product 
of the psychic forces in the social order. This method, 
however, did not exclude the objective facts, and did not 
ignore the practical motives. We found that war is a 
manifestation of many tendencies, and in fact is related 
to all the deep movements in the life of society and of the 
individual. War comes out of the whole of life in a way 
to preclude the interpretation of it in terms of any single 
principle, or at least to prevent our finding a single cause 
of war. We ought to try to see now how such a psy- 
chological view of war stands in relation to certain more 
objective views of it, which in a very general way may 
be said to be centered in two closely related views. One 
is that war is almost exclusively an economic phenomenon, 
and the other that war is the work of individuals. One 
is the economic interpretation of history, and the other is 
the great man view of history. 

We still see a lingering theory that war is a result of 
the ancient migratory or expansion impulse — that over- 
population and the pressure of various economic condi- 
tions are the source of the impulses that lead to war. We 
have seen reasons for believing, however, that war, even 
in the beginning, has not been a wholly practical matter. 
Hunger, pressure of population, migratory movements be- 
cause of economic conditions, will not explain the origin 
and the persistence of wars. Wars are not simple as 

128 



Economic Factors and Motives 129 

these views would imply, at any stage. That at the pres- 
ent time economic advantage, whether or not it be the 
motive of war, is in general not gained seems to be very 
clearly indicated. The taking of colonies and other lands 
may be a detriment rather than a gain to the conquering 
nation. The industry and the finance, of all concerned 
in war, are likely to suffer disaster. Peace is the great 
producer of wealth. War is a terrible destroyer of it. 
Ross says that as industry progresses, wars become con- 
tinually more expensive and less profitable, that the drain 
is not upon man power so much as upon economic power; 
nations bleed the treasure of one another until some one of 
them is exhausted and must yield. 

The theory that war is caused by the pressure of popu- 
lation, especially as applied to the recent war, now appears to 
have been very naive. It was maintained that Germany 
needed more room for her growing population, that Ger- 
many must have more land at home and more colonies. 
Claes (46), among several writers, shows that this is not 
true. Germany had no pressing need of more land, except 
for political purposes, or such land as provided the raw 
materials for her military industries. Bourdon (67) 
maintains that it is not true that Germany's population 
was becoming excessive. Le Bon (42) says that this 
theory of over-population is a myth. Still others have 
shown that in a country that is rapidly becoming industrial, 
as was Germany, where population is becoming massed in 
the great cities, emigration ceases; and that actually, in 
Germany's case, labor was imported every year, and that 
there are great tracts of arable land in Germany still but 
sparsely populated. Nicolai (79) also attacks the theory 
that war is sought for economic gain and says that an 
economic war among the European states is an absurdity. 

The need of colonies is often put forward as a real 
and also a legitimate motive for war. Colonies must be 
provided, they say, for the overflow of population from the 



130 The Psychology of Nations 

homeland; colonies are the foundation of the trade of 
nations — trade follows the flag. They think of colonies 
as the offspring of nations, and nations without colonies 
seem sterile and destined to extinction. We know that 
Germany's desire for colonies is one of the causes of the 
European crisis, and that the colonial question has been 
a fertile cause of trouble in Europe for many years. And 
yet we have evidence that in the present economic stage of 
the world, colonies do not perform to any great extent 
either of the functions that are claimed for them. Trade 
does not in general follow the flag ; industrial nations do not 
need colonies either to provide for over-population or for 
commercial reasons. The acquisition of colonies does not 
as such benefit the great industrial and financial interests. 
Why, then, do nations so ardently desire colonies; and 
why, without colonies, do they feel themselves inferior and 
at a disadvantage? Why, in a stage of industry, in which 
it is presumably more to their advantage to conduct ag- 
gressive campaigns in countries already densely populated, 
are nations so willing even to fight to obtain colonies? 
Powers (75) says that the desire for colonies comes 
from the idealistic tendencies of nations. This appears 
to be true. Correspondingly we find that colonies are of 
more interest to general staffs and admiralties than to cap- 
tains of industry. Colonies are wanted for military rea- 
sons, more than for trade reasons. Colonies are desired 
as bases of operation in the game of empire building by 
conquest. There is still another reason. The race for 
colonies perpetuates an ideal which has grown out of an 
earlier stage of the life of nations. Colonies were once 
actually the means of the greatness of nations. The long- 
ing for colonial possessions, for the extension of commerce, 
the great jealousy and apprehension of peoples in regard 
to their trade routes, and the fear nations have for their 
commerce, quite out of relation to present needs and condi- 
tions, hark back to an old romance of the sea. The water- 



Economic Factors and Motives 131 

ways of the world, the islands and new continents have a 
traditional appeal, which comes down to us from the days 
when the small countries of Europe, one after another — 
Portugal, Holland, Spain, England — became great in 
wealth, and grew to be world powers, by their commerce 
and their colonial possessions. In those days the expansion 
of nations was not at all due to economic pressure at home. 
The landowners, the rulers, the privileged class in general 
were interested in colonies, because in that direction 
stretched the path to fabulous wealth, and because over the 
seas were the lands of adventure. The seeking of colonies 
was both the business and the pleasure of the nations. To- 
day the gaining of colonies may be only a loss to nations 
economically, but they satisfy the craving for visible em- 
pire, and also a longing that is deep and intense because tra- 
dition and romance are deeply embedded in it. 

Probably no one now believes that war among modern 
nations is due to a pure predatory instinct or to a migratory 
instinct which is supposed to have led primitive hordes to 
seek new habitats and to prey upon other peoples. Hunger 
does not now drive people in companies from their homes 
and pour them into other lands, although it is true that any 
threat which excites the old hunger-fear tends to arouse 
the war spirit and to stir the migratory impulse ; and a deep 
sensitiveness to climatic conditions and a claustrophobia of 
peoples have remained long after the need of land has 
ceased to be vital. But we still find the need of land urged 
as the main cause of war, and we hear war justified on 
the ground that crowded peoples require more land. This 
land hunger is an old motive and it still remains deep in the 
consciousness of peoples long after its economic significance 
has ceased. Just as we say the threat of hunger is often 
imagined, and the fear of hunger and a deep and persistent 
fear of peoples and the sense of danger of being engulfed 
and destroyed by other peoples linger in consciousness, so the 
consciousness of the old struggle for land remains as one of 



132 The Psychology of Nations 

the most powerful of traditions, and any threat, near or 
remote, to a nation's land arouses all the forces of the war 
spirit, and the thought of aggression as a means of conquest 
of land is always alluring. 

Land was once the main possession and the main need. 
To-day it is the chief symbol of the power of a nation. The 
possession of it is desired when it gives nothing in return, 
certainly when there are no valid economic reasons for tak- 
ing it. This land hunger becomes the excuse of nations for 
their sins of aggression. A differentiated society, so organ- 
ized that only the few, if any at all, can by any possibility 
profit by the taking of lands still hungers for this primitive 
possession. To a great extent land as a national possession 
has an ideal rather than a practical value. It was one of the 
original sources of prestige and distinction, having become 
the main material interest of man as soon as he came to 
have fixed abode. The whole historic period of the world 
has been a story of a struggle for land. It is the memory 
of this land struggle, which is one of the deep motives of 
war, which often determines the strategy of war, and the 
policies of nations. 

Precisely how the system of great land ownership orig- 
inated is obscure. Sumner (70) says that the belief that 
nobles have always held lands, and are noble by reason 
of this possession, is false. Nobles have in one way and 
another enriched themselves and bought land ; or rather 
having acquired land they have succeeded in acquiring titles 
of nobility, and establishing their lines. In all nations 
which have retained any traces of the feudalistic form, 
and to some extent everywhere, land continues to be the 
basis of wealth, and also of power, and the land-owning 
classes are still mainly the ruling classes. This land-own- 
ing class is still dominated by the old traditions of the landed 
aristocracy. It is the fighting class, and supplies great num- 
bers of officers for the armies. It upholds the idea of 
national honor in its ancient forms as related to private 



Economic Factors and Motives 133 

honor; it provides the great number of diplomatic and 
decorative officers. Japan, Russia, Germany and to some 
extent England, at least up to the time of the war, have 
retained feudalistic institutions, and the land interest still 
remains as a motive of war. In all these nations, certainly 
in those which have remained feudalistic in fact, it is the 
aristocratic and owning class that usually represents the war 
interest. It both rules and owns. It sends out the peasant 
and the worker to extend the state. It is the protected class. 
Laws and constitutions favor it. Taxes fall lightly upon 
it. Originally this was the class that received all the benefits 
of war. To-day it suffers less from war than do other 
classes. Even when it does not gain by war in a material 
way, it is likely to gain in power (100). 

We have seen this system of class rule at work in very 
recent times, and it is a question whether the old ideal of 
land possession did not work to the ruin of Germany 
economically, and indirectly antagonize the industrial in- 
terests of the nation. German politics had been trying to 
serve two masters, who were not entirely in agreement. 
Germany was still a country of landed proprietors, and 
these proprietors always have thrown their weight to the 
side of war. They were by no means dominated by a 
motive of pure greed, and they did not seek war entirely 
for their own advantage, but because, we might say, they 
are ruled through and through by motives that can be 
satisfied only in a militaristic state of society. Their gain 
from a successful war is mainly a gain in prestige and dis- 
tinction. An unsuccessful war, as we have seen, threatens 
their extinction as a class. All democratic movements tend 
toward land division, or is indeed in part precisely this 
process. Aristocracy without land cannot maintain itself. 

The economic theory of war comes to its own in the 
view that industry now controls the world, that industry is 
the power behind politics, and that industrial needs are 
the real energies that make wars. We live in an industrial 



134 The Psychology of Nations 

age, they say, and industry rules. Plainly to find the whole 
truth about this relation of industry to war is no simple 
matter. There are at least three more or less separate ques- 
tions involved in it. We need to know whether an indus- 
trial state of society, or the industrial stage of economic de- 
velopment, is especially prone to cause wars, as distinguished 
from more general political and economic interests. We 
need to know whether wars, in an industrial stage, do really 
serve either the interests of industry or countries as a whole. 
Finally, there is the question whether those who control in- 
dustry and finance do actually create wars. 

In the industrial and financial stages of economic de- 
velopment new conditions arise which certainly must be 
taken into account in any theory of war. There are deep 
changes in national life. The moods of the city become 
a new force or a new factor in national life. Socialistic 
ideas and new aspects of nationalism and patriotism ap- 
pear. There is a spirit of unrest; both pessimistic and 
optimistic tendencies in society are increased ; the motive of 
power takes new forms, and there is a deep stirring of 
fundamental feelings and impulses. The crowd instincts, 
the old hunger motives, are felt beneath the surface of life. 
This is the effect of industrialism upon the psychic forces 
of peoples in their collective aspects. Nations also become 
as wholes more specialized in the industrial life; they are 
dependent upon one another as never before. All the 
ancient motives of commerce are stimulated, and the minds 
of nations revert to the old fears and the old romance con- 
nected with the thought of the seas. The growing in- 
terdependence of nations produces a peculiar and para- 
doxical condition. Competition in regard to markets 
arises, with all the complications and strains that we have 
seen in recent years. There are new motives of aggression, 
but at the same time the need and motives for peace are 
increased. Industries in general thrive best in an era of 
assured peace. They live upon the wealth and prosperity 



Economic Factors and Motives 135 

they themselves create. Intrigue, not force, is their proper 
weapon. Le Bon (42) says, that the desire to create 
markets was not the cause of the great war, because expan- 
sion went on very well in the time of peace. Germany had 
no aggressive designs except commercial designs we are 
told. Mach (95) tells us Germany's whole future, the 
success of her carefully laid plans for industrial develop- 
ment and supremacy, depended upon continued peace. 

That such views of the relation of industry to war are 
in the main correct can hardly be doubted. Industrial rela- 
tions create strains among nations, but when as a result 
of these strains war occurs it must be regarded as a dis- 
aster from the point of view of the industrial interests. In- 
dustry we say thrives upon the wealth that it creates. A 
war which destroys half the wealth of the world must be 
a calamity for all great industries except at the most a 
very few having peculiar relations to the activities of war. 

But there is another aspect of the relations of industry 
to war. Industrialism as a great institution and movement 
of modern life becomes in itself a political power. Howe 
(100) says that with the end of Bismarck's wars per- 
sonal wars and nationalistic wars came to an end. The 
old aristocracy of the land merged with the new aristocracy 
of wealth and this wealth has become the great political 
power in the world. But this is only a half truth. Industry 
has become a factor in the foreign relations of nations, and 
has become a power in politics, but the motives and powers 
we call political are exceedingly complex, and the interests 
of business, industry and finance are by no means the whole 
of or coincident with political interests. There are of 
course certain industries and financial interests which may 
even instigate wars, and some writers give them a high 
place among the causes of war. Especially the makers of 
munitions and armaments are credited with a baneful in- 
fluence in the world. With their international understand- 
ings, their influence in legislative bodies, their control of 



136 The Psychology of Nations 

newspapers, they are open to the charge of manipulating 
public sentiment, and bringing influence to bear upon gov- 
ernments. They are accused of equipping small countries 
and setting them against one another, of deliberately en- 
couraging the race for military and naval supremacy. No 
one can doubt that their opportunities for trouble-making 
are many and enticing, but to think of these influences as 
anything more than the incidental and secondary causes of 
war seems to be a curious way of understanding history 
(100). 

The inside history of the great financiering projects 
would no doubt give us some of the main clews to the 
present diplomatic relations of nations to one another. If 
we take into account the various intrigues in connection 
with the building of the Bagdad route, the financing of -the 
Balkan States in their wars, the bargaining of the Powers 
in Turkey for financial concessions, the great business inter- 
ests involved in the Russo-Japanese war, the loans to China 
and all the rest of the financial history of a few decades we 
should have in hand materials that no one could deny the 
importance of for an understanding of current history. 
Diplomacy has had added to its already complex duties the 
art of securing financial advantages. In general the art of 
this diplomacy is to secure these advantages without war, 
but there can be no doubt that financial relations have mul- 
tiplied the points of contact and strain among peoples, and 
that these financial relations have become the main occa- 
sional causes of wars. Howe (100) thinks that surplus 
capital is to blame for a great many of the great disasters 
of modern times — that it destroyed Egyptian independ- 
ence, led France into Morocco, Germany into Turkey, and 
into the farther East, embroiled the Balkan States ; and that 
the great war has been a conflict over conflicting interests 
of Russia, England and Germany in Turkey. Under the 
guise of expansion of trade this invisible wealth has been 
exploiting the most vital interests of foreign countries. 



Economic Factors and Motives 137 

Veblen would go so far as to say that wars are govern- 
ment-made, that patriotism is exploited by governments 
in advance of pre-arranged hostilities to produce the spirit 

° If we hold that these economic causes are now the most 
important causes of wars, it is easy to accept the conclu- 
sion that the most fundamental, and even perhaps the sole 
cause of war is the evil principle of ownership, as is actually 
maintained by many economists. If men in cliques and 
men as individuals did not own privately great parts of 
the wealth. -of the world, these conflicts in which wealth 
and its distribution are the .most vital interests would not 
take place Many socialists, we know, hold these views, 
asserting that wars are due solely to industrial competi- 
tion among nations, and to the fact that industrialism is 
based upon the wholly wrong principle of private owner- 
ship Hullquist, a socialist, -says that wars are likely to 
become more frequent and more violent as the capitalist sys- 
tem of production approaches its climax. The working 
classes the socialists say, who have nothing permanent, are 
the natural enemies of war; the capitalists, who have much 
and want more, are constantly placing peace in jeopardy. 
The protective system of tariff also receives much abuse 
from these writers. Novicow (71 ) places the tariff sys- 
tem high among the causes of war. The belief that it is 
good to sell and bad to buy, he says, is the great trouble 
maker in the world. This was also the principle of Cobden 
the zreat English free-trader of the middle of the last cen- 
tury The Manchester school of which he was the leader 
would do away with wars by making the world economically 

1 Veblen (97) charges the price system with being a fun- 
damental cause of war, and says that it must now come 
up for radical examination and perhaps modification, the 
theory of the rights of property and contract which have 
been taken as axiomatic premises by economic science may 



138 The Psychology of Nations 

itself fail, or at least be thrown open to question. Either 
the price system will go, or there will be wars between na- 
tions in the future as there have been in the past, because of 
the need of protection of ownership rights, and because of 
the nationalism these rights create. To some extent these 
rights of property have been curtailed, Veblen remarks; 
the old feudalistic rights have in large part been annulled, 
and the world is at least owned by more people than was 
once the case. That these changes and readjustments of 
property rights will be carried still further he thinks there 
can be no doubt. 

Stevens draws similar conclusions about the evil effects 
of property rights. The great war and all wars, he asserts, 
are based upon existing social conditions — upon the or- 
ganization of the family, the school, the state, the church, 
upon the institution of property, with its corollaries of 
foreign markets and other industrial relations. Protec- 
tion of trade, which works in the interest of the owner 
classes, indirect taxes which fall upon the consumer, the 
labor system by which, at the present time, the laborer re- 
ceives but a small share of the profits, but must become 
when necessary the defender of the interests in which he 
does not share — all these things we hear being charged 
vigorously with being the causes of wars, including the 
recent great conflict. This system is blamed not only for 
our great international wars, but it is looked upon as the 
germ of wars to come, internal wars, when international 
wars shall have ceased, or temporarily have been abated. 
When, perhaps, the restrictions that assume that the gain 
of one country is the loss of another have satisfactorily been 
adjusted, the system that maintains that the capitalist can 
prosper only at the expense of the laborer will come up for 
final settlement (97). 

All these views, from a psychological point of view, seem 
to be open to the criticism that they tend to consider the 
world one-sidedly and by a certain abstraction. They are 



Economic Factors and Motives 139 

dealing with a world governed only by economic laws. It 
is easy to construct these ideal worlds. They are simple 
and they lend themselves readily to the purposes of a 
political calculus. Finding economic motives in individual 
life, in the social life and in politics, and in history it is 
tempting both to explain the past and plan the future in 
terms of the entities and principles of economics. But 
after all it is only when we consider economic motives in 
their relations to all the motives behind human conduct that 
we are likely to see the economic motives in history in their 
true light. Then we shall very much doubt whether prop- 
erty has been in any real sense the cause of wars, or that 
the abrogation of property rights will be the means of estab- 
lishing perpetual peace. We shall see that economic mo- 
tives themselves are but aspects of deeper motives, and 
involve desire for objectives that are not sought for their 
material value, and also objectives that are not material at 
all. The process of development of present human society, 
so far back as we can see, and as far into the future as we 
can with any confidence predict, seems to contain as a neces- 
sity some form and degree of human slavery. This ap- 
pears to be inherent in the fact itself of the existence of in- 
dividual wills, having in any degree individual or personal 
interests as they must, and the impossibility of devising any 
social order or government that will give to the individual 
an ideal freedom, if such a conception be indeed possible 
at all. We may conjecture at least that in a world in which 
every trace of an economic motive had been removed, if this 
were possible, there would still be slavery of some kind, and 
the inexorable logic of individuality would in the end pro- 
duce conflict and war. 

Nations, like individuals, live, and they pass through 
certain stages that seem in a general way to be necessary 
phases of their development. During this process of de- 
velopment certain objects become, one after another, of the 
most vital concern because they are necessary to the satisfac- 



140 The Psychology of Nations 

tion of the motives which guide the lives of these nations. 
But these objects are never so definitely marked off that 
they become to the exclusion of other motives the causes 
of wars. The social life is never so simple as this would 
imply. The past is always involved in the present. One 
after another certain types of economic objects become more 
or less central in the interests of nations, but the minds of 
nations, like those of individuals, are always influenced by 
the tradition. Objects are desired with reference to the 
satisfaction of motives that represent complex and general 
desires. There are ideal objects as well as material objects; 
and the material object is often sought because of its possi- 
ble use as a means of satisfying the desire for ideal values. 
First food, then land, then commerce, then industry, then 
wealth itself, — this has been the order in which eco- 
nomic values have become objects for the consciousness of 
people as groups, and have become involved in and more 
or less completely represent the relations among peoples 
we call political. That which is, relatively speaking, an 
object of necessity at one stage tends to become an ideal 
or romantic object of the next stage. The relations of 
economic objects to the desires of nations and to war are 
complex and not precisely what they may on the surface 
appear to be. Nations, like individuals, do not know what 
they need, and they do not even understand clearly what 
they desire. Their desires are complex : elementary eco- 
nomic motives, political motives, personal motives, the 
motives of industry and finance, the motive of power and 
the craving for certain states of consciousness all exist to- 
gether, and to some extent antagonize one another. The 
present practical desire is confused by the traditional ob- 
ject. The will of a nation is a composite will, and its his- 
tory is full of contradictory impulses, and also full of sur- 
prises. Nations often think they are fighting for economic 
reasons when their real motives are plainly to gain military 
distinction. The reputation is quite as satisfying as any 



Economic Factors and Motives 141 

material prosperity gained. There is an illusion and a 
delusion about it all. All these economic advantages that 
nations are always seeking have something unreal about 
them. Nations seek them long after they represent real 
values. Nations seek colonies when, if business is what 
they want, it could better be obtained nearer home. Finance 
looks for advantages overseas, when there are quite as 
safe investments at home paying quite as large profits. Na- 
tions have desires to do great things, not merely to live and 
prosper. 

That is the way these economic problems of war appear, 
at least when they are examined in relation to other aspects 
of war and of society. These economic problems are 
merged into and subordinate to the political or the historical 
problems, and economic causes of war must be considered 
with reference to the psychological principles that are at 
the bottom of all social development. 



CHAPTER X 

POLITICAL AND HISTORICAL FACTORS 

We think of political causes of war mainly as an aspect of 
the fact that nations desire always certain geographical ob- 
jectives. These desires are represented in part by the poli- 
cies of governments and leaders, but we must also think of 
nations as a whole as having desires, and as being moved by 
profound purposes. At once the question arises whether 
we shall think of these political objectives, and the wars 
the desires for them cause, as essentially the objects and the 
work of individuals. Do individuals in any real sense cre- 
ate history? This, of course, is a profound question and 
involves fundamental theories of history. Shall we accept 
the " great man " theory of history, and say that history is 
mainly the work of a few who are able to shape events with 
reference to policies of their own, or shall we think that 
forces that determine history reside rather in the instincts 
or desires of the common life of the people? 

A psychological study of history inclines us to the belief 
that the forces that make history are mainly forces that do 
not exist as conscious purposes and are therefore not essen- 
tially political forces. One of the conditions of leadership 
seems to be that the leader shall seek his own personal ends 
and realize his own purposes for his country only within 
the field of the traditional and common objectives which are 
held by the people as a whole as their purpose in history. 
These are the materials with which the leader must work. 
Historically his work may seem decisive. Psychologically 
it is to be regarded as a complex effect of lawfully related 
social reactions. The motives of leader and people must 

142 



Political and Historical Factors 143 

have large common factors. The leader holds his power 
and his prestige by embodying in his own will and repre- 
senting in his own conscious policies the will of the people 
and their idea of country as an historic entity. The leader 
is leader only in so far as he is recognized as representing 
the will of the " herd." As genius, this leader is manifestly 
creative, but the true genius in statesmanship is even rarer 
than genius elsewhere. The great leader is an artist. He 
must take certain vague or clear ambitions of the people, 
must accept the nation's historic objectives as the founda- 
tions of his policies, and working with these objects and de- 
sires make his own page of history. His glory and his pres- 
tige depend upon his fulfilling deep desires of his people. 
The forces with which he deals are plastic, but only within 
narrow limits. Leadership at best is a fragile thing. 
However autocratic the power, it is after all dependent upon 
the good will of the people, and the acceptance of the leader 
as one who is serving the interests of the people. 

When we consider the nature and the objects of the am- 
bitions and desires that the statesman or leader must fulfill, 
we see why the relations of ruler to people are difficult to 
understand. Nations do not know with clearness either 
what they desire or why at heart they desire the objectives 
that seem of most importance. People give economic and 
political reasons, but the consciousness of nations is subject 
to deep moods, and is influenced by remote events and tra- 
ditions. Nations have generic desires as well as specific 
ones. They always crave empire; they all desire to have 
rank. They are always ambitious, jealous and watchful of 
one another. These general and more or less subconscious 
desires make their desires for specific objects intense, but 
they also make them peculiarly irrational. The heroic ex- 
amples of history, hereditary emotions and the effects of 
specific events in the history of peoples complicate their 
politics, and often make rational politics impossible. Na- 
tions will not act in their own best interests, because they 



144 The Psychology of Nations 

are governed by irrational motives. In this way certain 
disparities are often produced between the people and their 
practical statesmen, but history seems to show us that when 
these disparities exist in the region of fundamental desires 
and policies it is the leader who must yield. History seems 
to show us also that wars, coming in general out of the 
deeper motives of nations, do not belong to such an extent as 
is often supposed to the realm of politics. Political causes 
are often incidental causes and determine the time and place 
of wars but do not create them. Cramb (66) says that 
wars persist in spite of their unreason, because there is some- 
thing transcendental that supports them, and this transcen- 
dental purpose is the desire for empire. Powers (75) says 
that nations fight for tangible things and also for intangible 
things. The tangible things are existence, commerce, inde- 
pendence, territory; nations also desire objects that are not 
useful, the worth of which consists in their satisfaction of 
taste. The ambition to own colonies, Powers thinks, is of 
this nature. Colonies are quite as much ornamental as they 
are useful. They convey the feeling and impression of 
power. 

That these deep desires of nations as expressed in the am- 
bition to reach certain geographical objectives are exceed- 
ingly strong, often if not always irrational, brutally arro- 
gant and tenacious, the whole course of history teaches us. 
These desires are indeed the forces behind historical move- 
ments. They create politics and policies. War preexists 
in these irrational purposes. These purposes are charged 
with emotion, with prejudice, and tradition. It is with 
these motives that all practical politics must contend, and 
these motives are the forces that the statesman must use and 
make more rational. 

The purposes of nations are usually if not always we 
say obscure and deep, existing in the form of ideals and 
tendencies, and likely to take the form of visions of empire 
wholly unrealizable. And yet there are always certain per- 



Political and Historical Factors 145 

fectly clear objectives upon which all the force of these 
half understood motives impinge. These objectives may or 
may not be economically rational or morally justifiable. 
We always know with certainty certain of these objectives 
for which any nation will if necessary fight. These objec- 
tives have often a long history behind them. They are 
surrounded by tradition, sincerely and even religiously 
sought. They are ideal objects which nations feel they 
have a right to possess. Every nation apparently believes 
itself the logical possessor of something it does not now 
hold (99). All peoples have their longings for these pos- 
sessions, which are their vision of a greater self. These 
objects are often desired for reasons that are clear enough 
to all ; but they are also often but the symbols of deeper de- 
sires. As such, nations act toward them with almost in- 
stinctive compulsion. 

We may suppose that no great historical event is ever 
enacted that is not determined more by traditional desires 
than by conscious politics. A thousand years of strife have 
provided the motives for the great European war. Mem- 
ories of time-honored objectives have arisen in the con- 
sciousness of many peoples, and these memories cannot be 
recalled without exciting passions that make all rational 
politics unavailing. Europe has been fighting over again 
her battles of the past, and at the moment of the present 
writing is carrying them into the conference of peace. The 
plans of statesmen and the intrigues of finance have but lit- 
tle success in contending against these forces. Since the 
leaders themselves are not free from the prejudices and the 
compulsion of traditions and the unconscious desires and 
deep impulses which move their people, they can with but 
dubious success bring international politics into the sphere 
of reason. They do not represent merely the selfish de- 
sires of their people. They are not merely spokesmen of 
the interests of class or individual. They are embodiments 
of the whole history of their nations. 



146 The Psychology of Nations 

All history, and all the present relations of nations to 
one another may, of course, be considered in terms of the 
desires for specific objectives caused by the imperial desires 
of peoples, these desires themselves being regarded as a 
sum of motives, the effects of past political relations, and 
containing both rational and irrational elements. The 
world is a vast field of stress in which the powers at work 
are national wills rather than political forces as the projects 
of rulers and the diplomats. These powers, when fully 
aroused, are quite beyond the control of statesmen acting in 
their ordinary capacities, and their final issues no historian 
ought now to try to predict. History has been full of sur- 
prises because of the nature of the forces which create his- 
tory, and these surprises seem to have been sometimes the 
greatest for those who were most intimately concerned in 
making history. Events seldom run smoothly according to 
well laid plans. 

It would not fall within the scope of a psychological study 
of war to describe or analyze the complex system of strains 
that exist in the world to-day, and to point out the condi- 
tions that led to the great war would be for the most part 
unnecessary, since they must be obvious to all. The main 
items in such a study of history, however, may well be re- 
called to mind. One would need to show the effects of Eng- 
land's irresistible development through several centuries; 
the struggle for the control of the Mediterranean; Ger- 
many's efforts to extend her empire toward the East, and 
the closing of doors against Germany's advance ; Russia's 
pressure upon the Teutonic peoples, the ancient and terrible 
dread of Russia on the part of the nations of Western Eu- 
rope, the shadow under which Turkey, Germany, and Eng- 
land had lived because of the presence of the great Slavic 
state, with its mysticism, its dynastic ambitions and its great 
growth force, its need of open ports, and vital interest in the 
amalgamation of the South Slavic peoples, and the determi- 
nation to own Constantinople and to succeed to the place of 



Political and Historical Factors 147 

the Turkish Empire. We should need to take into account 
the long history of the struggle for colonies, the colonial 
trust of Russia, England and France, the ambitions of 
France for empire in Africa, the operations of French 
finance in the Balkans and elsewhere, Austria's aggressive 
hatred of Serbia, and her effort to prevent the revival of 
Poland, the conflicts of Germany and Austria with Italy 
in regard to the yEgean and the Adriatic and their shores, 
the fierce irredentism of Italy, and the ambitions of Italy 
that have brought her into conflict with the Teutonic pow- 
ers and with Turkey, all the conflicting purposes and am- 
bitions of Greece, Roumania, Bulgaria, and Serbia, and the 
added strain in the Balkans because of the vital interests of 
all the Great Powers there, and many other conflicts and 
causes of conflicts. These conflicts we see repeated in kind 
in the relations of Japan, China and Russia and the other 
powers interested in the geography of Asia, and in the 
waters of the Pacific, and once more in the growing strains 
between the East and the West (99). 

Taking our world as we find it, and viewing the nature 
of nations in the light of their history and of their per- 
sistent antagonisms, one might readily believe that the causes 
of war and war itself will continue into a far future. No 
war, the pessimist might well argue, will destroy national 
vitality or neutralize the many points of strain. There 
may be great coalitions and even Leagues of Nations, but 
these may only make wars more terrible when they come. 
The friendship of nations will still be insecure and shjjiiag. 
The great strategic points of the world will remain. Small 
countries will continue to be ambitious and jealous of one 
another. Island countries will still be faced by coasts that 
contain possibilities of danger. The Constantinoples and 
the Gibraltars will remain; Suez and Panama will be left, 
and Verdun will still be something more than a historic 
memory (99). 

That these objectives might all be brought into a perma- 



148 The Psychology of Nations 

nent state of equilibrium, by some ideal world politics, that 
nations ought to abandon their ideas of empire or at least 
see how crude these ideas are, how out of relation to our 
modern ideas of value, and how out of place in a practical 
world — all this we can readily understand, but who will 
expect nations to become very different from what they 
are now, and who shall say how many imperial eggs there 
are in the world yet to be hatched ? There are many ways 
of justifying these ambitions — Germany justifies hers by 
reason, and the researches of her great historians — the 
Treitschkes and the Mommsens; Russia bases her claims 
upon her religion and her ethos; Japan brings her divinity 
and her traditions, her vitality and her intelligence ; England 
offers her justice and above all her proved genius for gov- 
ernment as a justification of empire. But after all, these 
desires for empire lie deeper than proof and reason can go. 
Poetic, dramatic and religious elements enter into them. 
There are geniuses among nations. The creative force in 
a nation is its life force, its essence and its reality. In some 
sense the desire to be an empire is the whole meaning of a 
nation, for without the ambition to be supreme, peoples, 
some of them, would be nothing. It is the vision of empire, 
however forlorn and hopeless, that keeps many nations alive, 
perhaps all. Nations seek to express in visible form the 
evidence of their inner and potential greatness. The his- 
toric and time-honored art of empire-building is the only 
art they know. Whether this is the tragedy of history, the 
world's fate and the condemnation of it to perpetual war- 
fare — or is but a term in the logic by which nations rise 
to other and higher forms ; or finally is a crime or a mistake 
which it is within the power of the will of man to abandon 
or amend — these are problems of the philosophy of history. 



Political and Historical Factors 149 

Historical Causes 

Historical causes of war are in part the sequences of 
events that the political causes of war produce (political 
as the causes inherent in the wills of nations), and we must 
suppose they are mainly this. History, from this point of 
view, is the working out of the motives or the desires con- 
tained in these national wills. The causes of our late war, 
for example, are to be sought mainly in the wills of the 
great powers that are concerned in it. Economic forces, the 
laws of the growth of nations (both psychological and 
physical laws), the conditions of the geographical distribu- 
tions of peoples over the earth — all these are involved in 
the cause of wars. There are also great personages whose 
actions must to some extent be considered apart from these 
general laws; these personages contribute factors to the 
causation of any given war that are not entirely inherent in 
the laws of growth or the psychology of nations. Shall we 
say also that there are fortuitous factors, historical causes 
that are not contained in any logic of human desires? Can 
we say, perhaps, that these fortuitous causes are indeed the 
main causes — in a word that wars are not desired, mainly, 
but are the product, indeed, either of the mere logic of 
chance, or of a design that transcends human will alto- 
gether? Are wars willed, or are they the results of the 
complex, the illogical and uncontrollable factors of the 
world's existence and movement? These may not be prac- 
tical problems, but they are serious problems, since in the 
end they implicate the whole of philosophy. 

What place shall we give, in the laws of history, to the 
sudden and chance turn of affairs; to the quick shift of the 
wheels of fortune; to the incidents, the accidents, the mis- 
judgments of rulers and the slips of the diplomats? Are 
wars after all a product of the logic of life, or are they 
mere fortuitous syntheses of events which in their particu- 
lar combination make a total that is not involved, either as 



150 The Psychology of Nations 

desire or as tendency, in the sum of the particulars that enter 
into the whole? How completely, in a word, do the inter- 
ests and purposes of nations determine wars? May we 
speak of motives that always tend to produce wars, but never 
seem to will them? 

History seems to show us that wars are less directly willed 
than we have sometimes supposed, and perhaps that there 
is a large element of chance in them as regards a given war 
at any time and in any place. War in general is inherent in, 
or is a natural effect of, the laws of development of nations. 
Wars as historical events are not completely describable in 
terms of these laws. It is the old contrast between the his- 
torical and the scientific explanation of things that appears 
here. Nations have deep and vague desires, we say. They 
want satisfaction of their honor; they crave a dramatic life, 
even military prestige and glory, but we do not often find 
war itself definitely willed. The desires of nations, we re- 
peat, tend to be too fundamental to be specific. Their spe- 
cific desires are indeed and for that reason likely to be con- 
tradictory. They desire both war and peace at the same 
time, and have interests that may be served by both. They 
live in indecision like individuals. Motives conflict. They 
hesitate, and doubt, and fear. They shrink from taking the 
plunge. It requires the sharp and clear event, the chance 
event, most often, to precipitate them into wars. It is al- 
ways to-morrow that they are to wage wars. So wars dp 
not usually occur by the rational plans and devices of any 
man or any historical sequences of men, we may believe, and 
it is a question whether wars are very often intended in a 
real sense by any one. Wars occur as crises in events. 
The strains that produce them are certainly inherent in the 
relations of nations at all times, and even in the motives of 
personal politics, but in general these relations as consciously 
governed relations are in the direction of seeking the greatest 
advantage with the least show of force. The conditions 
must all be present, both the match and the powder, before 



Political and Historical Factors 151 

war can take place. There must be a condition of strain, 
having certain psychological features none of which can 
be missing, the condition being something complex and not 
readily analyzable, at any given time. In addition to these 
strains events must take place which, in all their appear- 
ances, are fortuitous. 

One might argue from this that the cure of war consists 
in eternal watchfulness to see that the match does not touch 
the powder, that we must watch these events that precipi- 
tate wars and safeguard peoples from being affected by 
them. This, of course, is more or less the method of 
diplomacy; to some minds the league of nations is a device 
for doing this on a larger and more systematic scale. But 
when we study history and see what these war-causing inci- 
dents are, how numerous and how variable, we can see that 
diplomacy and statesmanship undertake an impossible task 
when they try to steer the world along its narrow historical 
course, with only historical landmarks for guides. 

The war that is so vividly in mind now furnishes us with 
an illustration of the complexity of the causes of war, and 
allows us to see clearly contrasting views of the causal fac- 
tors in great wars in general. We see here a closely fitting 
series of events, each in itself having but little reference to 
the great crisis, all fitting together, and for want of any one 
of which, if one takes the purely historical view, we might 
suppose the war would never have happened, or might have 
been postponed indefinitely. If Venezelos, to go back no 
further than that, had remained in Crete and had been con- 
tent to be an island politician, would not the course of 
events in the Balkans have been very different? Out of his 
course came events which no one could have foreseen, but 
which, without similar actions on the part of individuals 
producing other links in the chain, would not have taken 
place. If some diplomat or some foreign office had made a 
decision slightly different from what was actually decided ; 
if the three emperors had had a little more reliable infor- 



152 The Psychology of Nations 

mation about one another; if the statisticians of the German 
service had computed a little better England's resources, 
and had put the moral factor into the sum — would the 
war have happened at all ? 

In this direction, of course, lies the chaos of history and 
its madness — and also its philosophy. We may be driven 
on the one hand to think of all history as a matter of the 
chance relations of individuals and of detached particular 
events, having significance as a series but never planned or 
controlled as a whole, or we may resort to the opposite way 
of thinking, and say that all of history, in every particular 
and detail, is divinely planned and prearranged, and each 
event fits into a rational whole. This, of course, is our 
final problem of history, we say, as it is the final problem 
of every question that considers life as concrete events 
having value precisely as the particular sequence that it is — 
when we view life historically, in a word, rather than by the 
methods of the quantitative sciences, or by the genetic 
methods such as are used mainly in the psychological sci- 
ences, and which we may say stand between history and the 
sciences of matter. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE SYNTHESIS OF CAUSES 

It appears to be no very difficult matter to discover causes 
of war, and indeed a considerable number of causes. In 
fact the problem seems to yield an embarrassment of riches, 
especially if our chief interest happens to be a practical 
one, and we wish to find the causes of war in order to see 
how they may be controlled. We might even have discov- 
ered all the causes of war and still be as far as before from 
any real understanding of the cause of war. Unless one 
can know the relative importance of the causes, and the 
manner in which the causes combine to produce wars ; unless 
the results give in some way a synthetic view of the causes 
of war, show dominating causes, or reveal a total cause 
which is not merely a summation of stimuli, but is both 
a necessary and a sufficient situation for the production of 
war; unless we have shown some fundamental cause and 
movement in the social order, we are still left in search of 
the cause of war. 

We have, indeed, found a number of causes of war, but 
at the same time the causes have not appeared to exist as 
separate causes. We are always catching sight of a move- 
ment in the development of nations and of the world — of 
certain fundamental motives, the most basic of all, the most 
general, being the motive of power. These causes of war 
do not appear, however, to be of the nature of a chain, giv- 
ing us the impression that in order to break the habit of 
war, all we need do is to discover the weakest link in the 
chain of causes, break the chain there, and so interrupt the 
whole mechanism of war-making in the world. Above all, 

153 



154 The Psychology of Nations 

although fortuitous events as causes of war must not be 
overlooked, war is not continually being made anew by the 
appearance again and again of accidental situations, which 
are thus to be regarded as the cause of war. 

War is, first of all, a natural expression of the social life, 
resting primarily upon the fact of the existence, universally, 
of groups of individuals acting as units. But here cause 
and effect are lost in one another. Conflict cements the 
group, and the existence of the group, again, is the cause 
of conflict. War is an aspect of the social solidarity of 
the group acting under certain conditions, and these condi- 
tions are the presence of deep desires that can, in general, 
be satisfied only by the exertion of force on the part of com- 
munities acting as wholes. 

These primitive motives and moods of war that we find 
in the nature of the social group itself, emerge finally in 
three aspects of the life of nations, and it is these aspects 
of the life of nations that appear to us as the causes of war. 
They are not separate and independent features of the 
social life, and it is in part only for the sake of convenience 
that they are sharply separated at all. They are all at 
bottom manifestations of the motive of power that runs 
through all history, and all the social and individual life. 
On one side this motive appears in moods and impulses that 
we called the " intoxication " moods and impulses. Na- 
tional honor was found to be another effect of it. The 
political motives of war are its concrete expression. These 
motives all together — all being but phases of a deep, pow- 
erful energy and purpose, are the source of the main move- 
ment in history out of which war comes. In this movement 
all the motives of the social life are always present and 
active at the same time. The good and the bad of national 
life are phases of a single purpose and are not two con- 
trasted principles or moments. The past is always con- 
tained in the present. 

War, then, is the result of certain motives which are 



The Synthesis of Causes 155 

fundamental to the group life. It is a natural form in which, 
given a certain degree of intelligence and of complexity of 
the social life, these motives express themselves. All the 
motives and forms of expression are present in germ at 
least from the beginning of the development of the social 
life. Considering the whole history of war we see that it 
is a part of a very complex movement in human society, and 
yet that no war appears to be the final term of a process of 
inexorable logic. Taking history as a whole, we see that 
the natural laws involved and the nature of the social con- 
sciousness make a state of war from time to time highly 
probable, but war is not a necessary consequence of any 
natural law. Nations are self-conscious personalities. 
Perhaps in the future they may change their ways, abandon 
voluntarily their desires, subject themselves to discipline, or 
deliberately invent a plan of international relations that will 
have the effect of eliminating war from their lives alto- 
gether. 

It is always dangerous, but at the same time it is always 
tempting to try to explain national life, or all life and his- 
tory, in terms of the individual and his experience. Once 
more, however, we may yield to that temptation and say 
that the world to-day is in a stage of development which 
has many traits that show its relation in some very signifi- 
cant ways to certain undeveloped conditions found in indi- 
viduals, which in fact always appear as phases of the 
life of all individuals in some degree and form. Nations 
have acquired a high degree of subjectivism, partly on ac- 
count of the geographical conditions under which they have 
lived, and the many barriers between nations due to differ- 
ence of origin and of language, and the fundamental emo- 
tions of fear and jealousy which, as we have seen, play so 
large a part in the life and conduct of groups. Nations, 
however close to one another, have remained isolated in 
spirit: they have lacked both the initiative and the means 
for becoming definitely related to one another in purposive 



156 The Psychology of Nations 

and sustained activities. Therefore all their relations have 
remained highly emotional, subjective, influenced by mysti- 
cism, filled with hatred and fear, hero worship and illusion. 
Nations have lacked both the power, and we might say, the 
organs, for externalizing their spirit. They have dreamed 
dreams and played plays, and followed their illusions of 
empire. Even their wars have not, until perhaps now, be- 
come wholly real and serious in a measure commensurate 
with their powers and resources. The present war more 
than any other, and more than any other event in history, 
represents an escape on the part of nations from their sub- 
jectivism, and a beginning, it may be, of the realization of 
a more mature, or shall we say more normal conception of 
the world. Nations have played at being great and have 
really produced but little true greatness. Now, let us say, 
their dream is over. We see that these nations can no 
longer play. Their wooden weapons have at last been 
turned to steel. They can fight no longer indeed without 
destroying one another. They must now live in practical 
and moral relations, give up their bright dreams of empire 
after the old heroic order, and be content to be imperial (if 
they are born to be imperial) by performing distinguished 
service in the world, by their own genius of leadership. 
There is work in the world for nations to do ; there are em- 
pires of the spirit, it may be, greater than have yet been 
dreamed of in the nations' childish philosophies of life. 
The consciousness of nations contains, it may be, unsus- 
pected powers, suppressed in the past by narrow national- 
ism, by fear, habit and convention. These powers may 
now, if ever, blossom forth ; they have been wasted too 
long in patriotic feeling and in idle dreamery. They must 
now show what they can do in a practical world that will 
have no more of mere assertions. 

The world stands to-day balanced between two ideals. 
Human spirit, the spirit of nations, is a free and plastic 
force ; it is also a sum of motives and desires ; but most 



The Synthesis of Causes 157 

fundamentally of all it is a growing, living, creative and 
personal spirit. It still clings to its luxuries of feeling, to 
its provincial life, it is still fascinated by its beautiful ro- 
mance of empire. On the other hand we see the stirring 
of a new idea. A new world arises, less dramatic in its 
appeal than the old world, but a world appealing by its 
practical problems both to the will and to the intellect. 
Shall we yield to the fascination of the old romance and go 
back to our hero worship; or shall we be inspired now by 
this vision of a new and greater social order, create out of 
our own powers of imagination the forms this world must 
assume if it is to appeal to the deepest feelings of all peo- 
ples, and make this new world real by our own intelligence 
and determination? 

We stand to-day at a dramatic moment in history ; a more 
dramatic moment than when the victory itself hung in the 
balance. Perhaps our sense of responsibility for the future 
is an illusion ; perhaps we are driven by an inexorable logic 
of history, and we do not after all choose what our world 
shall be. But certainly the sense of human power in the 
world has never been greater than now nor seemed better 
justified; nor, if we are deceived, has the reality ever been 
more out of harmony with the ambitions of man. 



PART II 

THE EDUCATIONAL FACTOR IN THE DEVELOP- 
MENT OF NATIONS 



CHAPTER I 

EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS OF THE DAY 

Education, like all other institutions, has been charged, 
we know, with having contributed its share to the causes of 
the war. The Prussian school system, we have been told, 
was mainly a school of war ; all the emotions and ideas nec- 
essary to produce morbid nationalism, distorted views of 
history, and a belief in and a love of war were there fostered 
and deliberately cultivated. There is, of course, some truth 
in this; it is a truth that is deceiving, however, if we regard 
it as at all indicating the true relation between education and 
practical affairs. If the school was a factor in the late 
war, such a creative effect of education appears to be rare 
in history. In general it is the negative effect of the school 
that is most conspicuous. It is what the school has not 
done to prevent war, what it has failed to do in not bringing 
nations out of their perverted nationalism into a life of 
more practical relationship with one another that really best 
characterizes the school. 

It is difficult or impossible for us now, of course, to 
perceive what the war has done — in what way, all in all, 
the future will be different from the past. It is very easy 
and natural to look at everything dramatically now, see 
revolution everywhere and believe that all institutions 
are now to be radically changed. Or, going to the other 
extreme, we may become cynical, and say that, human na- 
ture being unchangeable, we shall soon settle down into the 
old routine and we shall see presently that nothing revo- 
lutionizing has transpired. Some will say, and indeed are 
saying that education must now be entirely remodeled; 

161 



1 62 The Psychology of Nations 

some will think that education had best go on as before — 
that nothing has happened certainly to require any new 
philosophy of the school, or any profound change in its 
form. We see these two tendencies in many phases of our 
present situation : in politics, in education, and in the busi- 
ness world. 

It is impossible, we may repeat, to make wholly safe 
judgments now about the future, but still something must 
in the meantime be done. We must either stand still or go 
forward — or backward ; we must act either with a theory 
or without one. The school is involved in this necessity. 
There is a new content of history that we cannot ignore, 
but must in some way teach. We must say something about 
the war ; current events can hardly be kept out of the school, 
and to understand current events there must be a wider 
content of history than we have had in the past. There 
are new, or at least disturbed, conditions in the industrial 
and in all the social life, and these conditions cannot fail 
to have some effect upon the school. The school must 
adjust itself to them, and it must surely take into account 
new needs that have arisen. Patriotism may need to be 
taught now, or taught in a different manner. There is a 
problem of war and peace, the question of what ideals of na- 
tional life we are to convey. Internationalism demands 
some recognition on the part of the school. It seems prob- 
able, therefore, and even necessary that a new interest in the 
function of education will be felt and must be aroused. 
Must we not indeed now examine once more all the founda- 
tions upon which our ideas about education rest ? Certainly 
there will never be a more favorable time, or more reasons 
for such a task. 

It is the impending internationalism, or the idea of in- 
ternationalism now so vividly put before us all, that most 
incites new thought about education, and about all the 
means of controlling the ideas and feelings of the people. 
We hear much about reconstruction and readjustment, and 



Educational Problems of the Day 163 

these terms obviously imply the old ways and the old in- 
stitutions. But internationalism is something new, having 
many possibilities; it means new relations among peoples; 
it opens up new practical fields and new phases of sociology 
and economics. It is because of this new phase of the 
social life and social consciousness of man, we might sup- 
pose, that education is most likely to be affected in its 
foundations, so that no mere readjustment will be enough. 
A new politics and a new science of nations appear, and 
we cannot fail to see that there is at the present time 
something decidedly lacking in education ; that there is a 
larger life perhaps for which our present ways of educating 
children would not sufficiently prepare, and that to prepare 
for this larger life something more would be needed than 
an added subject in the curriculum. This is because inter- 
nationalism is not simply more of something we have al- 
ready; it is a turn in the road, and a turn which, it can 
hardly be denied, will finally affect all institutions. If 
internationalism has come to stay, it will need, and it must 
have, powerful support from all educational forces. It 
will need something more than support ; education must 
produce creative habits of mind, which shall make and 
nourish new relations in the world, and it must make 
people intelligent, so that they can understand what the 
new and larger relations mean and what must be accom- 
plished by them. 

A casual observation of the educational situation might 
indicate that education is limited in two ways, so far as 
being a means of meeting our present needs is concerned. 
It is lacking in pozuer; it treats children and youths still in 
a fragmentary way, and the process of learning is some- 
what detached from the totality of living. There is a lack 
of richness of content, and a lack of responsiveness in the 
school to the stirring life outside the school. If we may 
say that history now turns a new page, and that society 
stands at a change of tide, education is also in a peculiar 



164 The Psychology of Nations 

and interesting position. The school may, from now on, if 
our view of it be at all just, be expected to do one of two 
things : it may settle down to a relatively successful work, 
in a limited sphere of usefulness, training children well, 
especially fitting them to enter into our present social 
order; or, on the other hand, the school may now become 
a much greater power, and may seize hold upon fundamental 
things in life and society under the stimulus of new con- 
ditions — find a way to a deeper philosophy, a more con- 
sistent theory, attain a more exalted mood and higher pur- 
pose, and become a far more potent factor in civilization. 

That education will remain unaffected in profound ways 
by the war, is difficult to believe. One may very readily, 
as we say, see these impending changes in too dramatic a 
way, and begin to talk about profound upheavals and 
ideals that certainly will never be realized (and w T e ought 
to guard against this easy idealizing, which leaves human 
nature out of the reckoning) ; still we cannot but feel that 
in some way a new dimension has been added to the social 
life as a result of the war, and that education, in dealing 
with this greater society, must itself be raised to a higher 
power. If we think, educationally speaking, in terms of 
a world at all, rather than in terms of individuals, or com- 
munities, families and nations, we are quickly impressed 
by the sense of living in a new order of educational prob- 
lems, and possessing, it may be, a new variety of self-con- 
sciousness. Nations in this new view are thought of as 
parts of a world, as having many external relations, whereas 
formerly almost all education has had reference at the most 
to the internal life of nations. Patriotism has been the 
expression of its most distant horizon. 

If we believe that anything new is about to be realized 
in education, it might seem natural to begin to think about 
changes from the standpoint and in the terms of the old 
chapters and topics. We might ask what this or that sub- 
ject of the curriculum means or must produce that it did 



Educational Problems of the Day 165 

not mean and did not produce before; or we might consider 
the old and the new requirements in the education of the 
feelings, the will, the intellect ; or we might take any other 
of the educational categories as a basis for a discussion of 
the philosophy of the school. These programs, however, 
do not seem to be very inspiring. Would it not be better 
now to try to distinguish the main fields of life and the 
main interests in regard to which new questions and new 
needs have arisen, and see what changes in our educational 
thought are really demanded by them ? On such a plan, in- 
ternationalism itself would first demand attention, and 
indeed most of all. In a sense all questions about educa- 
tion must now be considered with reference to international- 
ism in some way. Then there are the problems already 
raised during the war and widely discussed, about the teach- 
ing of patriotism. Patriotism becomes a new educational 
problem, a chapter in our theory of education, in which we 
become conscious of ourselves in a new way, and are aware 
of our larger field and changed conditions. There are 
questions, too, about the teaching of the lessons of the war, 
what we shall think about war in general as a good or an 
evil, how we shall conceive peace and its values. Changes 
are taking place in government, and in our ideas of govern- 
ment, and governments are being put to new tests. Political 
education can hardly fail to be now one of our most serious 
concerns. Democracy appears to be our great word; the 
control and education of the democratic forces and the 
democratic spirit becomes an urgent need. Industry ac- 
quires new meanings ; we must take up again all the theory 
of industrial education, for we have seen of late that in- 
dustry contains possibilities of evil we did not before un- 
derstand. Social problems arise in changed forms. The 
new world-idea or world-consciousness becomes an educa- 
tional problem of the social life. Class difference can never 
again be ignored as it has been in the past in the schools. 
Moral, religious and aesthetic education seems to have a 



1 66 The Psychology of Nations 

different place in the school, just to the extent that all life 
has become more serious on account of the war. These 
demands made upon the deepest elements of the psychic life 
suggest the need once more of a new philosophy of educa- 
tion, or, at the least, a greatly increased recognition and 
application of the philosophy we already have. 

Before the war there was a sense of security and the 
feeling that our education was adequate to meet all de- 
mands. We were proud of our educational system. Our 
democratic ideals, people said, were safe in the hands of the 
public school. Industrial education was meeting fairly 
well the needs of the industrial life. There were no very 
pressing class problems. The troubles of capital and labor, 
although always threatening, seemed to demand no educa- 
tional interference. The religious problem was temporarily 
not acute. Aesthetic forms had been attended to in the cur- 
riculum sufficiently to meet the demands of the day. Hy- 
giene and physical education and individual attention seemed 
to be making rapid advances. All of these had been in- 
fluenced by the scientific methods of treating educational 
questions. On the whole we seemed to have a good school. 
But now the question must be asked whether this school of 
yesterday will be adequate to meet the needs of to-morrow; 
whether new conditions do not call for new thought, new 
philosophy, new schools. These things of course cannot 
be had for the asking. We cannot give orders to genius 
to produce them for us. But a generation that does not 
hope for them, we might suspect of not having realized 
what the war has cost. For so great a price paid have 
we not a right to expect much in return, especially if we 
are willing to regard the war as a lesson rather than as 
a debt to us, and bend all our energies to make it count 
for a better civilization? 

W r e may already see in a general way what the effect 
of the war is to be upon the mind of the educator. The 
journals begin to be filled with plans for the participation 



Educational Problems of the Day 167 

of the school in the work of reconstruction. There are 
many suggestions for the improvement of the school. In- 
dustrial education, the classics, history, military education, 
social education are all being discussed. Evidently many 
minds are at work. Some of them, indeed many of them, 
are apparently most concerned about what changes we 
shall make at once in the day's work of the school. Many 
wish to know what we are going to do now with Latin, 
or history, and how we can improve the method of teach- 
ing in this or that particular. But there are some deeper 
notes. Thinkers are asking elementary questions about 
the whole of human nature. They wish to know what the 
original nature of man is, and what the limits of our con- 
trol over human nature are. Such books as Hocking's 
" Human Nature and its Re-making " and Russell's " Prin- 
ciples of Social Reconstruction," which grapple with the 
basic problems of human life, are signs of the times. No 
one can yet predict what the final result of the increased in- 
tellectual ardor that has come out of the war will be, but it 
seems certain that that striving of the mind which has made 
the literature of the war so remarkable a page in the history 
of the human spirit will continue, and in the field of educa- 
tion as elsewhere in the practical life there will be new 
vitality and earnestness. 



CHAPTER II 

INTERNATIONALISM AND THE SCHOOL 

If we take a serious and an optimistic view of education 
as a social institution, and think of it at all as standing 
in functional relationships with the social life as a whole, 
we must conclude that internationalism as a new move- 
ment and idea, and the school as an institution in which 
changes in the social order are reflected (but in which also 
changes in the social order are created) are closely related. 
Adjustment is a relatively easy matter; it is the conception 
of the school as a creative factor that challenges our best 
efforts. Let us think of the school as a workshop in which 
there must be created the forces by which we must make 
a desired and an otherwise unrealizable future come to 
pass and we have a new and inspiring view of education. 
The school perhaps must do even more than educate the 
forces; it must help even to create the vision itself by 
which the future is to be directed. The school becomes, so 
to speak, the working hypothesis of civilization. In it the 
ideas and the desires by which nations live must be made 
to take shape. 

The idea of internationalism implies certain changes in 
the external relations of nations which, whatever the form 
internationalism will take on its political side, are not 
difficult to perceive. These in turn imply internal changes. 
We might readily outline or psychologically analyze what 
could be called the mood of internationalism, in order to 
see its relations to education. It contains a number of 
factors, more or less related to one another. First, there 
is a recognition of a world of growing, living historical 

168 



Internationalism and the School 169 

entities which we call nations ; and this recognition implies 
new understanding and an enrichment of knowledge. Sec- 
ond, there is a change in the consciousness of nations, 
slow but visible, by which they become more willing to in- 
vestigate freely and fairly their own place in history, under- 
stand their own desires, functions, virtues, faults, the value 
of their culture and civilization. Without such an attitude 
all talk of internationalism in any real sense is idle. Third, 
there is a new and different prac ical interest. We begin 
to conceive our world as a world of complex practical rela- 
tions, and this idea of a practical world is likely to become 
one of the leading thoughts of the future. Fourth, by ex- 
tending, so to speak, this idea of a world of practical 
relations, we idealize a world in which there is a common 
interest in great international achievements, — a world de- 
voted more than it is now to coordinated efforts to accelerate 
progress, more conscious of the needs of a distant future, 
perhaps, or even of an ideal of universal efficiency as a 
means of realizing some one world purpose or many good 
purposes. This is not now, as it once might have been 
called, merely an Utopian dream. In some slight degree 
it is already being accomplished. Fifth, social and moral 
feelings are widened in scope, and must be still further ex- 
tended ; it is in the form of the democratic spirit, that these 
feelings must find expression. And this democratic spirit 
is on one side practical, but it is also something more than 
the emergence of the common mind ; it is the aristocratic idea 
carried out universally that we look forward to, an en- 
thusiasm for all true values, -a mood and activity in which 
all people participate. Sixth, there is a necessary attitude 
toward world organization or world government, according 
to which we think of world government or world organiza- 
tion as a means of accomplishing results which fulfill funda- 
mental desires and purposes of the peoples of the earth; 
as a growing structure, something to be added to and im- 
proved. Seventh, if so general a tendency and demand may 



170 The Psychology of Nations 

be made clear, there is a philosophical mood, which must 
be made a part of the ideal and the attitude of the future, 
if that future is to realize even the practical hopes of the 
world. This philosophical attitude is first of all a way of 
living comprehensively and more universally, in the world 
both of facts and of ideas. It means a less provincial and 
a more widely enriched life for all. It means also an 
ability to choose the good not according to preconceptions 
and narrow principles, but according to the wisdom con- 
tained in the experience and the selective powers of man- 
kind as a whole. This means a life in which men live, so 
to speak, more collectively. 

These factors of the idea of internationalism, whatever 
we may think of the possibility of their realization, make 
in their totality an educational problem : they are specifica- 
tions, so to speak, laid before us for the making of a new 
educational product. If we say that it is useless to think 
of such things, we are saying merely that it is useless to 
hope to be a factor in conscious evolution, or that the world 
as a whole has no purpose and no goal. If we believe educa- 
tion has any function in the larger work of the world, edu- 
cational philosophy must take these things into account, 
see how they may be created or sustained, and how they can 
be made to work together to help bring to pass the kind of 
future men are talking so much about. 

I. The Essential World Idea 

Our present situation has plainly made it necessary for 
us to understand the world in which we live far better 
than we have in the past, and to be willing to make more 
dispassionate judgments about it. For better or for worse 
we have entered upon a new stage of history, in which 
heavy responsibilities fall upon all peoples, and upon none 
more than upon ourselves. Enlightenment beyond all our 
present understanding is a necessity. We have been pe- 



Internationalism and the School 171 

culiarly isolated and separated from the world's affairs; 
now we are peculiarly involved. We have, however, one 
great and unusual advantage. In our case it is ignorance 
rather than prejudice that we must overcome in ourselves. 
The world feels this and recognizes the unusual place this 
gives us. We have no thousand years of continuous strife 
to distort our historical perspective. We ought to be able 
to be just interpreters of the history of the world. Our 
universities ought to be the greatest centers of historical 
learning, and as a people we should feel ourselves called 
upon above all other peoples to know the world. 

As a nation we pass out of a local into a broader political 
field. We become citizens of a world, but this world is 
no mere habitation of individuals who are to be affiliated 
with one another. It is a world of national wills. Inter- 
nationalism is first of all a recognition of the legitimate de- 
sires of nations. But such a recognition of the legitimate 
desires of nations cannot be effected merely by spreading 
abroad good will. A widespread education in the meaning 
of history must first be made the foundation of interna- 
tional justice in the minds of the people. Current history 
and future events seen in the light of all history, of history 
as the science and story of all human experience, become 
our chief intellectual interest to-day. The war has taught 
us how little the people in the world know about the world 
as a whole. All history thus far has been local history. 
Everywhere there tends to be the prejudice in some degree 
that comes from the private need of using history for 
political ends. Unless we can now put history, real his- 
tory, at the head of our sciences, the war will have failed 
of a great result, whatever in particular, in a political way, 
it may have accomplished. 

With such an understanding of what is to be meant by 
history we say, if that seems an adequate way of ex- 
pressing it, that the teaching of history becomes one of 
the fundamental problems of the educational work of the 



172 The Psychology of Nations 

day. It might be better to say that living in the historical 
spirit is demanded as a way of salvation of the world. 
However, adding geography and economics to history we 
have a content that must somehow be taught in the schools. 
History, as the most concrete science of the actual world in 
which we live, now seems to have become a new center for 
the curriculum. Hitherto we have tended to regard his- 
tory too lightly, as the story of the world ; now there must 
be a deeper view of it. We must have an understanding 
of the motives and the desires of peoples; history must 
not only be broader and more comprehensive but more 
penetrating and psychological. It is the purposes of na- 
tions, working themselves out in their history, that we 
must understand. There must no longer be great un- 
known places on the earth. Germany, Russia, Japan must 
not continue to be mysteries. National psychology must 
be made a part of historical interpretation. This new 
history must be the means of showing us our world in a 
more total view than we have thus far had of it, so that 
we may better discern the continuity, if there be one, be- 
hind the detached movements and multiplicity of facts pre- 
sented by the world's story; for perhaps, in this way, we 
should better understand what the future is to produce, 
and what, more important still, it ought to be made to 
produce. 

The need first of all is for a continuation of the interest 
inspired by the war — an interest showing itself in the 
form of an universal interest in all history, and an inten- 
sive investigation of history. We need now, indeed, the 
most comprehensive study of the world that has ever been 
conceived or dreamed of by man. This is the duty of the 
historians. This new history must show us what nations 
are at heart, what they desire, what they can do. Such 
an understanding of nations is, we say, the real beginning 
of internationalism. It is a necessary foundation for it, if 
internationalism is to be anything more than a merely 



Internationalism and the School 173 

practical, prudential or political arrangement among nations. 
In the school-room eventually, and indeed beginning now, 
there is demanded a readjustment of interest by which his- 
tory takes a new and more central place. We must en- 
deavor to give the new generation a world-idea. And upon 
the nature and clearness of this world-idea much, in the 
future, will depend. 

Such a demand upon the school opens once more, of 
course, all the old problems of the teaching of history. 
All the dreary questions of the precise order in which his- 
tory should be taught — whether backwards or forwards, 
local first or the reverse, may be brought up if one chooses 
to do so. But after all, these questions are not very fruit- 
ful. What we need most is the historical spirit. We want 
a dramatic presentation of the world's whole story, by which 
the true meaning of history is conveyed. The methods of 
art must be added to the methods of fact. A persuasive use 
of the materials of history must be made. This means a 
change finally, perhaps, not only in the methods of teach- 
ing history, but in the whole mood and spirit of the school. 
Methods are likely to adapt themselves to necessity. Cer- 
tainly the slow methods of presenting facts, sometimes if 
not generally employed, the tedious lingering upon details, 
seems wholly out of place. We need a broader outlook in 
history. Even the young child must have a more compre- 
hensive world-idea, some sense of the whole of the great 
world in which he lives. This is one of the instances, it 
may be, in which we must set about breaking up any re- 
capitulatory order, natural to the child, which suggests an 
advance from the local to the more general and wider 
knowledge. The universal interests of the day so strongly 
affect the child, the social consciousness so dominates the 
individual consciousness that even the natural law of de- 
velopment must to some extent yield if necessary. This 
social consciousness, the interests and purposes expressed 
in the child's social environment, present the experience of 



174 The Psychology of Nations 

the adult world dramatically and intensively, exerting as 
we might say, a creative power upon the mind. That in- 
deed is precisely what the higher teaching, whether in the 
form of art, or in the form of vivid experience, conveyed 
though the practical life does everywhere in education. 

We do not yet know what history, taught thus dramati- 
cally and intimately, under the stimulus of the greatest 
events of all time might do for the mind of the child or for 
all the future of the world. We have never had the most 
favorable conditions for the teaching of universal history. 
We have been obliged to create interest. History has been 
taught externally, from the standpoint of a far-away ob- 
server. Now history may and must be taught more as it 
is lived. The world has become more real to every one; 
this sense of reality of a world of historical entities must 
be made to persist. We must not go back to our unreal 
and intellectualized history. The spirit of the nations must 
be made to live again, so to speak, in the minds of the 
coming generation. W'hat each nation stands for, its ethos, 
its personality, must be made clear. Powers says that all 
governments and all nations are sincere. It is the soul of 
nations, then, their own realization of themselves that must 
be made the real object of history. We must go back of 
the individual and the event at least, to the desires that 
have made history what it is ; we must see why events 
have taken place, and while sacrificing nothing of our 
own principles and standards, understand and feel what the 
principles and the nature of these widely differing nations 
really are. For the actual teaching of history, it is likely 
that the story, carried to its highest point of art, will still 
be the chief method. But pictorial art must be heavily 
drawn upon, and all the resources of symbolic art, as we 
pass from the lower to the higher stages in education, or, 
we had perhaps better say, as we try more and more 
to convey moods and the spirit of nations and epochs and 
to appeal to the deep motives in the subconscious life of 



Internationalism and the School 175 

the individual. Plainly there is much work to do in the 
investigation and the teaching of history for every grade 
and department of the educational system, from the gov- 
ernment and the higher universities to the teacher of the 
young child. It is an age of history, a day in which all 
sciences have as one of their tasks to aid in the under- 
standing of history. In the broader world and the universal 
life which the idea and the reality of internationalism has 
opened up to us, all must live in some way, if only in 
imagination. History is a part of the necessary equipment 
for that life. 

//. The Reeducation of National Desires 

The second factor in internationalism is also, on its 
educational side, related to a knowledge of history. This 
is the attitude which peoples must take toward their own 
purposes and ambitions. We must begin to speak of the 
education of national consciousness. This process of the 
education of nations must be such as will teach peoples to 
surrender certain visions most of them have in regard to 
a future which cannot now be realized. The content of 
the desires of nations must now be changed. The future 
of many peoples will depend upon the extent to which they 
can remain progressive and enthusiastic without the stimulus 
of imperialistic ambitions. 

Considering our own situation in America, it seems plain 
that we have confronting us a serious educational prob- 
lem, that of imparting to the rising generation and of 
acquiring for ourselves, a better understanding of the mean- 
ing and place of our country in the world, and a more ear- 
nest interest in its functions and its welfare. This re- 
quires something more than a teaching of American history. 
It is time for us to take stock of all our material and all our 
spiritual possessions. We need perhaps to discover what 
our ideals really are and what the ideas and the forces are 



176 The Psychology of Nations 

that have made our history what rt has been ; and what in 
the future we are likely to do and to be, and ought to 
do and be. We must question deeply at this time our own 
soul; we must look to our institutions, our literature and 
our art for an understanding of ourselves. 

This more profound knowledge of ourselves must be 
made the basis of our especial educational philosophy. 
Here is the most urgent of all our educational problems. 
Education is, or should be, a process by which national 
character is constantly being molded. In the school the 
nation must learn much that cannot be read in books. It 
must learn to believe things that cannot be proved, or per- 
haps even definitely formulated as truth. The soul of 
the nation must be subjected, in a word, to some kind of 
spiritual leadership. Constructive statesmanship must be 
felt as an influence in the school. The problem is really 
nothing less than that of educating and forming national 
character. Now that we stand less alone as a nation our 
character cannot safely be left so much to chance and to 
the effects of our favorable environment and our original 
stock of virtues. We cannot continue to be so naive and so 
unconscious of our country as we have been. What we are 
and what we must do as a people, we say, ought to be better 
understood. We should bring these ideals of ours out of the 
mists of partisan thinking and give them more definite 
shape, and at the same time translate them into the lan- 
guage of sincere living. National honor ought to be made 
a clearer idea. We ought at least to be sure it contains the 
idea of honesty. Such prejudices as our history has en- 
couraged in us must be recognized, and computed in our 
personal equation. These prejudices we certainly harbor 
— in regard to our own particular type of government, our 
culture and education, our freedom and our democracy 
and our security. Every nation appears to have its own 
idols, its concealments and its self-deceptions, its belief in 
its own supremacy and divine mission, and its innocent 



Internationalism and the School 177 

faith in its own mores. To overcome such narrowness 
and perversion without introducing worse faults is a diffi- 
cult problem of education. In either direction there appear 
to be real dangers. A nation steeped in provincial ways, 
plunged as we are now into the midst of world politics, has 
difficulties lying before it compared to which contributing 
a decisive military power is small. There are dangers in 
standing aloof from other peoples. But if we surrender 
too readily our prejudices and homespun ways, and too 
rapidly absorb influences from without, we shall be no 
safer, for carried too far, that would mean to lose our mis- 
sion and our vision. There appears to be, moreover, no 
safe and easy middle course which we can follow. Our 
only course seems to be clearly to understand ourselves, 
rise above our limitations and difficulties, turn our faults 
into virtues, and make ourselves secure by our own inner 
worth and power. 

Plainly there are difficult problems ahead of the teachers 
of American history. They must not inculcate suspicion 
and fear, but they must not present our security in a false 
light. They must not inspire the war-like spirit and im- 
perialistic ambitions, but they must do nothing to lessen 
our seriousness of purpose and enthusiasm for the future. 
They must not teach national vanity, but they must not on 
the other hand encourage a spirit which is in any way 
over-critical and cynical or supercilious. There must be 
political wisdom on the part of the people but not a sophis- 
ticated state of mind. These teachers must inspire a whole- 
some pride, without creating an inflamed sense of honor 
such as has caused so many wars. They must make clear 
the virtue and the individuality of our own national life, 
but in doing this they must not disparage the foreign and 
give rise to prejudice and antagonism. How to establish 
us still more firmly in our own essential traits and philoso- 
phy of life without making us conceited and closed to 
good influences from without; how to give us a strong 



178 The Psychology of Nations 

sense of solidarity without the attendant sense of opposition 
to everything outside the group is a part of our educational 
work which, in a broad sense, falls to the teacher of his- 
tory. 

The central problem of the education of national con- 
sciousness, in our view, is to make desires more conscious 
and to subject them to discipline and the influence of the 
best ideals of American life. MacCurdy says that by 
making instincts conscious we take a great step in advance. 
That we should say is true, if we make them conscious in 
the right way, and do not try to substitute rational prin- 
ciples for them. But we need to go further; we must not 
only understand and control the impulses of aggression, jeal- 
ousy, fear and the like that have played such a sinister part 
in history, but we must know more about those complex 
and subtile things we call moods, which are really the main 
forces in modern life. These moods are accumulations 
and repositories of interests and desires, and they must be 
appreciated by all who as educators, undertake to direct 
the forces in our national life. These desires must be made 
more definitely conscious everywhere, and be subjected to 
influence and education. It is not simply institutions, or- 
ganizations and factions that must be watched and con- 
trolled, just because these are the more obvious and most 
easily affected expressions of tendencies and desires, but 
all the subtile feelings or moods which are the raw ma- 
terials, so to speak, of future conduct, ideals, and institu- 
tions. 

Here comes to view, of course, our whole problem of 
assimilation of heterogeneous elements. Favored by our 
geographical position, and by the fortunate success and 
the great suggestive power of the ideal of liberty with which 
our history began, America has had, as we all realize, thus 
far an unusual career. We have been able to assimilate for- 
eign elements with great rapidity. We may not be so for- 
tunate in the future. Distances which have severed our new 



Internationalism and the School 179 

peoples from their old ties have become strangely shortened 
by the war. Our problems of adjustment have become 
more subtile and complex. The necessity of succeeding 
in unifying our population is more urgent. Therefore our 
future development, as a nation, becomes to a greater ex- 
tent a process of conscious direction; what we have done 
naively and by sheer force of our powers of growth, we 
must do now, it is likely, more deliberately and efficiently. 

We have before us in America the highly important and 
by no means easy task of harmonizing, under new condi- 
tions, all sorts of forces and desires by directing them in 
ways and toward ends which cannot now be wholly deter- 
mined. There is both a psychological and a pedagogical 
aspect of the situation. Psychology must perform for 
American life something very much like a psycho-analysis; 
we should expect to see as a result of the war a greatly 
increased interest, on the part of the American people, in 
themselves ; self-understanding and self-interpretation, we 
should suppose, would be advanced; all the sciences of 
human nature we should think would be called upon to 
help us to make a new American history and to formulate 
the purposes of our national life. 

On the pedagogical side we might expect reasonably to 
see a deepened sincerity on the part of all who in any way 
stand in the position of teachers. We are dependent upon 
leaders in a democratic country, and all leaders in what- 
ever place in society would now, one might hope, feel a 
heightened sense of duty, both to understand and to in- 
fluence American life, to represent in their own persons and 
teachings the highest ideals, and indeed to become truly 
creative forces in society. Boutroux says that Germany 
is a product of an external phenomenon — education. 
America, we should say, must become more and more a 
product of an internal phenomenon — education. That is, 
the forces that will continue to shape our country must 
be in the form of leadership growing out of the best im- 



180 The Psychology of Nations 

pulses and the true meaning of our civilization. No forces 
will make of us something we are not by nature ; our 
strength must continue to come from within, but it is the 
aristocratic spirit, the aristocracy of genius in the fields 
of intellect, morality and art that must of course have the 
fullest opportunity to influence all our institutions, even the 
school room. 

So to organize our educational system that it shall be 
thrown wide open to all new and good influences ; so to 
conduct the school that it shall be immediately responsive 
to these influences, is one of the most urgent needs of the 
internal life of the nation. This, rather than the introduc- 
tion of any new content into the school is now our chief 
need. Some of these influences must be personal, belong- 
ing to the present. Some belong to the past. We must 
make American history, poetry, oratory, science, art and 
philosophy serve more completely than they do now the 
ideals and the right ambitions of the nation. This is the 
way we must both bring the past to fuller realization and 
also create new life which shall make amends for the de- 
ficiencies of the past. 

77/. Practical Interests 

The foundation of internationalism, in our view, is the 
recognition of the legitimate desires and needs of peoples. 
The desires of peoples when educated should become in- 
terests in the performance of all normal functions of na- 
tional life. The functions are practical ; they take the 
form of many commonplace and daily activities. The 
recognition of the legitimacy of the desires of nations im- 
plies, or at least naturally leads to, cooperation in their ac- 
complishment. It is very probable, therefore, and it ap- 
pears to be required in any internationalism that is more 
than a name, that there shall be in the future wide co- 
operation in the performance of various activities by in- 



Internationalism and the School 181 

ternational organizations and agreements. If this is to be 
the order of the future, new educational efforts will be 
demanded, and there must be different methods and different 
points of view in several phases of our educational system, 
for now all education is devised with reference to an 
autonomous state of the nation. 

If practical cooperation becomes a part of our plan of 
international organization in the future, we shall see many 
problems in applied economics and industry taken up for 
far more serious consideration than has been possible 
hitherto. Some of these problems, attacked even on a na- 
tional scale, have seemed hopeless, but when viewed in their 
international aspects and with a prospect of international 
interest and effort they seem very different. There are. 
many such problems toward the solution of which educa- 
tion must contribute a large part. We might mention the 
food problem of the world as typical, and point to the 
present world-wide interest and cooperation as an indica- 
tion of what may come in the future in regard to all the 
problems of production and distribution of necessities, if 
we really mean anything by our internationalism. Ap- 
parently we hold within our hands the means of alleviating 
most, if not all, the destitution of the world. Organiza- 
tion and education in efficiency are the necessary and the 
sufficient weapons. 

So we may conclude that an efficient method of educat- 
ing peoples in the work of food production, and in the 
habit of conserving necessities would make a wide change 
in the economic condition of the world. Organization 
which shall include in some way the service of all chil- 
dren, will add still more to efficiency, and will contribute 
an educational factor of great importance. In such ways 
we may to an unlimited extent increase the available en- 
ergies of the world, and make possible, if we will, the 
further increase and expansion of the human race. Such 
a possibility and such an ideal give a totally new meaning 



1 82 The Psychology of Nations 

to much of the fundamental work of education. All our 
departments and accessories of the educational system that 
have anything to do with the elemental occupations acquire 
a new interest and importance from this point of view. 

The whole field of industry offers now, indeed, a broader 
educational opportunity. Children's hands are ready to 
do many things that will increase the happiness and the 
powers of the children themselves and at the same time 
add to the world's prosperity. Children must, of course, 
not be exploited in tasks that belong to the adult, but there 
is a proper place for practical organization of children 
in the world's work, and a potential helpfulness in children 
in the larger affairs of society that has not yet been drawn 
upon, although surely we have seen, during the years of the 
war, what children might accomplish. It is above all in its 
relations to universal social feeling that such practical edu- 
cation and use of childhood are most significant. Out of 
the practical activities, moral results could hardly fail to 
come. It is not too much to expect that the children of 
the world may sometime be so organized that the power 
of childish enthusiasm, raised to we know not what de- 
gree by the suggestive force of such world-wide relations 
as are now possible, may quickly be turned to the accom- 
plishment of great tasks, — doing its part in the service, the 
conservation, the self denial, that any serious interest in 
internationalism will in the future with but little doubt 
make necessary. 

Education that shall take into account the principles of 
efficiency and economy as applied to universal problems 
will be a great advance upon any teaching hitherto done 
in the interest of internationalism. It is through practical 
activity and interest, suggesting and requiring restraint and 
cooperation, arousing imagination and the dramatic im- 
pulses, that fruitful and permanent social affiliations of na- 
tions with one another will be likely to be made. We may 
safely assume, in fact, that firm affiliations can be made only 



Internationalism and the School 183 

in some such way. Internationalism, from this point of 
view, is at bottom not a political problem, but an educa- 
tional problem. The world will be united only through the 
mediation of its daily practical needs. The motives for 
such union are themselves commonplace. Moral inten- 
tions are represented also, and world crises make the con- 
ditions ripe for such coordination of interests, but they do 
not alone produce the definite organization without which 
the world will continue to be, as Dickinson calls Europe, 
a society in the state of anarchy. 



CHAPTER III 

INTERNATIONALISM AND THE SCHOOL (continued) 

IV. The Higher Industry 

It is in the higher forms of practical cooperative activity 
and in the intellectual processes, the interests and social 
feelings accompanying them that we should expect to see 
elaborated and made more ideal the internationalism that 
has first been put to work in the service of the world at a 
lower level. There is work to do that appeals to profound 
motives and feelings. The great engineering projects that 
await us, the work of exploring, colonizing and the like in 
which universal interest and cooperation are necessary fas- 
cinate the mind. These things satisfy the dramatic instinct, 
and they may prove to be in the future an actual substitute 
for war, as James hoped. The educational opportunities 
of this theme, at least, are great. Any nation that expects 
to play a great part in the world's politics must expect to 
do much in the world's service. These nations must be 
prepared in every possible way to contribute greatly to the 
material improvement of the earth. To this end technical 
education, all along the line, must be kept at a high point 
of efficiency. Inventive thought in all mechanical fields 
will certainly be a large factor in the culture values of 
peoples in the future. When we see what four years of 
war have accomplished in the way of giving us control 
over material forces, we may realize what, with the contin- 
uation of a powerful incentive, might be done in the arts 
of peace. These great practical needs have also, as we 
say, their power of appeal to all the profound motives of 



Internationalism and the School 185 

the social life. We must make use of this appeal. All 
the power of the strong story of the day's work must be 
turned upon this educational problem. All industry, in- 
deed, must be made more dramatic, as it can be under the 
inspiration of the larger industrial life which the idea of in- 
ternationalism opens up before us. Industry must be made 
more satisfying to the fundamental motives of the individ- 
ual, while at the same time it is made more efficient, and 
more social. The new generation must be filled with the 
romance of the world's work. Only by presenting to young 
and plastic minds the ideal features of work shall we be 
able to harmonize the individual and the social will. Only 
so, perhaps, in an industrial age shall we be able to escape 
from being destroyed by industrialism. Anything that will 
introduce art and imagination into work, anything that 
will even brighten a little the dull moods of toil will help 
both to prepare the way for the wider world relations we 
talk about, and to prevent the most destructive elements 
and moods of industrialism gaining the upper hand. 

V. The Democratic Spirit 

We must eventually think of internationalism on its 
educational side as most fundamentally a question of de- 
veloping in the world the international spirit. We might 
quite naturally think of this as the education of social feel- 
ing or of the social instinct. This is, however, not the most 
productive attitude toward the situation, in our view, sim- 
ply because when we think of the education of the feelings 
we are likely to be satisfied with the principles of an old 
static philosophy of life and of the school. Moral and 
social feelings, we believe, grow best in a practical medium. 
We cannot expand social feeling at will, or produce a 
democratic spirit -by some simple process of education. 
When we try to extend social feeling too far we make the 
moral life insincere. To try to expand social feeling and 



1 86 The Psychology of Nations 

moral interest so as to make it include the foreign, to try- 
to love our enemies in advance of all aesthetic and practical 
relations with the foreign seems futile. Distance must first 
be eliminated by imagination. Social and moral codes 
must be founded upon intimate relations. External and 
distant relations among peoples make for diplomatic forms 
and a hypocritical morality. These are substitutes for so- 
cial feeling. These purely social relations of nations (like 
those of individuals) always hide enmity and jealousy. We 
cannot expect, therefore, to create a moral spirit in the 
relations of peoples to one another by teaching alone. We 
cannot hope to change individualism to altruism merely by 
exciting feeling. Our main effort must be directed toward 
establishing ethical relations, rather than to stimulating 
moral sentiments. 

It seems useless to preach universal brotherhood either 
to the child who lacks entirely the content of experience 
to make such sentiments real, or to the working masses 
who now lack enthusiasm in all the social relations. At 
least to depend upon such teaching to create international 
spirit is futile. Love for mankind is too ideal and too 
remote, as yet, to arouse deep and sincere impulses and 
feelings. All teaching, therefore, whether in the school 
or elsewhere that is directed exclusively or especially to 
the moral aspects of peace, altruistic behavior and in- 
ternationalism, seems to-day, to say the least, peculiarly 
inadequate. Our spirit in education must be broadly 
humanistic, and must indeed lay deep foundations for all 
moral and social relations, but in so far as it ends in being 
cultural and hortatory it can have no deep and lasting 
effect. 

The teaching of international morality and universal in- 
terests, and the development of a world-consciousness de- 
pend fundamentally, we may suppose, upon experiences 
which are perhaps not specifically moral in form at all. 
It is rather even by the aesthetic experience than the moral 



Internationalism and the School 187 

that the social consciousness will best be expanded and made 
to encircle the world. If we can make the world seem 
vividly real to the child we shall have the intellectual 
content for the making of moral feelings. The unmoral 
nature of international relations and of the feelings of 
peoples for one another are due in great part precisely to 
the lack of power of imagination and of that concrete 
knowledge and experience which would make the foreign 
seem real. That which is remote from us and different in 
appearance seems shadowy and ghost-like. The internal 
meaning of that which is thus far away in space cannot 
be perceived. Everything that is foreign tends to belong 
in our categories merely to the world of objects. Moral 
feeling towards objects is manifestly impossible. Interna- 
tional law fails to have moral force because nations are 
in general aware of one another only in these external 
ways. The world of foreign objects must be changed to 
a world of persons having history and internal meaning. 
When we can interpret and understand international law 
in terms of relations within human experience and as 
affecting individuals, it will begin perhaps to seem real and 
hence morally obligatory. 

There is another aspect of the work of creating and 
directing the wider social consciousness and giving it ethical 
purpose and form, which is still more fundamental, and 
at the same time, to casual thought, perhaps still more 
remote from definite moral improvement in the world and 
from all the immediately practical problems of interna- 
tionalism. It is the mood of our social life which we call 
the democratic spirit, and which, made universal, is the 
substratum of internationalism that most of all needs to 
be controlled and educated. At the same time this demo- 
cratic spirit is least of all susceptible to definite and rou- 
tine discipline, of all the factors of internationalism. This 
democratic spirit contains possibilities of the greatest good 
and of the greatest evil. Out of it may grow interna- 



1 88 The Psychology of Nations 

tional order, or international anarchy and internal dis- 
ruption. How to keep this democratic spirit progressive 
and constructive in its temper, broad in sympathy and 
full of enthusiasm, how to free it from infection by all 
the poisons that are prone to attack the popular conscious- 
ness is one of our great problems of education. 

This democratic spirit is the real power behind inter- 
nationalism. It is as the mood of the city, the whole spirit 
of the modern urban life, that it is most significant. The 
mood of the city contains on one side the possibility of 
an internationalism which is nothing more than a sur- 
render of all patriotism, and is at heart only a mass in- 
terest in rights and needs. On the other hand all the 
interests and impulses that make internationalism necessary 
and possible seem to have their origin in the city. The 
city represents, with all its evil, the higher life and the line 
of progress. Progress passes through the city. The city 
is the symbol of creativeness and achievement. Industrial- 
ism, the essential spirit of the city, is the condition, normal 
and necessary we must conclude, out of which the necessity 
of international order arises. It is a phase of the process 
by which nations become dependent upon one another by 
being specialized and becoming densely populated. It is 
also a factor in the cause of wars without and revolutions 
within. 

The mood of the city is thus in a sense the essence of 
life, but it is also the source of disease and death in the 
national life. It is the price that is paid for civilization 
that the city tends to become the hardened artery of na- 
tional life. The control of the city moods by educational 
forces we may believe is one of the most fundamental of all 
the problems of conscious evolution. It is the control at 
the fountain-head of the forces out of which international- 
ism is to be made that we undertake when we try to educate 
the life of the city, with reference to its good and its evil. 
The too rapid urbanizing of the life of nations, the produc- 



Internationalism and the School 189 

tion, in the cities, of powers too great and too rapidly 
growing to be controlled by the civilizing forces in a coun- 
try is the great danger in modern life. So great indeed 
are the dangers in the accelerated growth of industrialism 
in all the great countries and the increased specialization 
in the industrial life, that something radical must be done, 
in our view, to counterbalance this movement, and espe- 
cially to control and to raise to higher levels the psychic 
factors of city life. 

Our educational work is serious. We are trying to save 
democracy from itself — from being destroyed by forces 
which accumulate in the cities. We must keep life from 
becoming sophisticated before its time. We must pre- 
vent enthusiasm from degenerating into mob spirit, and 
from becoming attached to wholly material interests. 
There mast be found, in some way, means of causing 
counter-currents to set in against the tide that flows so 
strongly from country to city. Germany's fate should 
teach us the dangers of this city life, and show us how 
the forces that gather in the great cities can be turned in 
the direction either of fanatical nationalism or toward the 
lowest of all forms of internationalism, in which all form 
of government is thrown down. It must teach us also 
how to catch the note of new " dominants " that are con- 
cealed in the roar of city life, and to make these prevail. 
The control of the formation of the city moods, and the 
direction and utilization of the great energies contained 
in them, now require, if ever anything were demanded of 
conscious creative effort, more poiver on the part of all our 
educational factors. The school appears now to be at the 
parting of the ways, we say, when it must either settle down 
to its routine and limited occupation of preparing children 
for life, or become a far greater power in the world than 
it has as yet been. We must decide whether the school is 
to control, or to be controlled by, the political and indus- 
trial forces of the day. We must see whether the school 



190 The Psychology of Nations 

is going to reflect the culture and the moods of the environ- 
ment, or whether the school shall exert a creative influence 
upon its surroundings. 

It is plain that nothing less than a radical change in 
the school can now greatly alter its position, and release 
it from its bondage to politics and from the overwhelming 
influences of its environment, and prevent the leveling 
downward and the stereotyping process that is taking place 
in the school, both as regards its intellectual and moral 
product and the training and selection of teachers. Nothing 
less than a movement which shall break up some of the 
deepest and most firmly rooted habits and conventions of 
the school and throw the school back, so to speak, upon 
more generic and primitive motives than those that now 
control it will be sufficient. The school needs more than 
anything else a change of scene — a change of venue, if a 
legal term be allowed. The school everywhere, but espe- 
cially the school of the city, is surrounded by influences 
that prejudice it to fixed habits of thought and keep it true 
to a type which has long since ceased to be necessary. The 
school is causing an in-breeding of the city spirit in all the 
great industrial countries. 

No single change in any institution, in our view, could 
strike closer to the roots of our whole educational prob- 
lem of the future than the bodily transfer of the city school 
far out into the open country. Such a move seems wholly 
practicable, economic from every point of view, even the 
financial, and it would place the school in a position in 
which profound changes in its whole plan and organiza- 
tion could hardly fail to follow almost automatically. With 
our present facilities for transportation, the daily exodus 
of children from the surroundings in which are being pro- 
duced the elements of our civilization that are hardest to 
control would be entirely possible. The effects upon the 
whole of education, and upon all the future life of coun- 
tries like our own could hardly fail to be profound. The 



Internationalism and the School 191 

fundamental moods of childhood would be changed, and 
everything contained in child life would be more amenable 
to control. Schools would become more variable and more 
experimental, and new selective influences would be exerted 
upon teachers presumably in the direction of raising the 
social and intellectual average of the profession. A much 
larger field would be opened up for all those methods of 
work in education that may be designated as aesthetic — 
that is, that contain qualities of freedom, activity and crea- 
tiveness. 

VI. Idea of World Organization 

Some form of organization of nations having definite 
representation, constitution, and laws, and with a certain 
degree of centralization and embodiment in visible institu- 
tions and locations will exist, we may suppose, for all future 
time in the world. The existence, even in idea, of such 
organization presents to us inevitable educational prob- 
lems. Instruction in a general way and universally in 
world politics, familiarizing all with the meaning of these 
laws and political bodies, is but a part, although a necessary 
part, of the work. Our democratic principle demands that 
more and more interest and participation in all forms of 
government be acquired by the people, that peoples and not 
merely governments shall be the units which are brought 
together, that there be more organizations of the people 
performing group functions. If the loyalty of nations to 
one another is to be secured, as seems necessary, by estab- 
lishing practical relations among them, the education of the 
coming generations in these relations and organizations and 
in all practical affairs seems unavoidable. The people must 
have a proper appreciation of common interests as implying 
common work, and not be encouraged to believe that rights 
of representation are their chief concern. All must know 
the power of organization. All must see that the interna- 
tional structures of our own day, however complete in 



192 The Psychology of Nations 

form, are but a beginning and basis of function, and that 
there must be put behind these forms all the energies of the 
people, young and old, made effective through organiza- 
tion for practical efforts. 

It is through participation in activities that are inter- 
national in scope that, in our opinion, the best education 
in the idea of internationalism will be obtained. This is 
the way to the good will without which political ideas will 
be likely to remain nationalistic in fact whatever political 
coordinations may exist among nations. It is as a prac- 
tical idea that internationalism needs now to be impressed 
upon the minds of all. An international organization must 
be looked upon as something useful, which will remain 
only if it performs functions in which all are interested and 
in which all can in some way take part. It is a sense of 
living in the zvorld rather than of belonging exclusively to 
one locality that must be taught. It is the idea of a world 
of nations in organic unity rather than a world of nations 
attached to one another by political bonds that we need 
to convey. 

It is active participation in the business of a world that 
must be regarded as the necessary basis for education 
in the idea of internationalism. World government must 
be conceived in terms of world functions. But we must 
also provide for the most dramatic possible representation 
of everything contained in the idea of internationalism 
and represented in its laws and forms. The most vivid 
possible presentation must be made of everything that is 
done internationally, if we wish to keep alive the spirit 
which now prevails in the world. We must lose no op- 
portunity to make current history impressive ; we must bring 
out all its dramatic features in order to fixate once for all 
the idea of the organic unity of the race, and its necessary 
coordination in tangible forms. International law must be 
made intelligible to very young minds, and now that we are 
to have an international seat of congresses and courts the ut- 



Internationalism and the School 193 

most must be made of its existence to give reality to the idea 
of internationalism. 

Those who plan for the future of the international idea 
will do well to take into account these pedagogical aspects 
of it. It is quite as important to make the international 
idea pedagogically persuasive as to make it politically sound. 
Such an idea must have a place and an embodiment if it is 
to seize hold upon the popular mind. An international 
city seems indispensable, and the further the thought of it 
can be removed from that of existing countries the more 
readily will it aid the young mind in making the abstractions 
necessary to conceive the true interests of all nations or 
all humanity as distinct from the interests of one nation. 
In this we are making beginnings to be realized perhaps in 
a far distant future. We want no unnatural and senti- 
mental internationalism, but there is every reason now for 
wishing to plant the seed of a higher and more organic life 
than at the present time exists in the world. 

The question of the possibility of an universal language 
arises again. The invention of a new language, if we may 
judge at all by the past, is not practicable. But the exten- 
sion universally of some living language seems possible. 
This seems to be demanded in the interest of the interna- 
tional idea. It is desirable and quite possible to make all 
civilized peoples bilingual, for of course we should not 
expect anywhere to see a foreign language supplant the 
native tongue. It is not alone to facilitate intercourse 
and give a sense of solidarity that the possession of an uni- 
versal language is to be desired. We think quite as much 
of the impetus thus given to the production of an universal 
literature, in which there will be expressed not only ideas 
about the world, but moods which will not be found ex- 
pressed in national literatures at all. This literature might 
be the beginning of a solidarity in the world which is not 
now definitely conceivable. Such an extension of language, 
however, we should hardly expect to take place except in 



194 The Psychology of Nations 

the course of development of practical relations which first 
stimulate the desire for such common language. 

VII. The Philosophical Attitude 

There is an element in the idea and mood of interna- 
tionalism which we can call nothing else but philosophic. 
The ideality and universality of internationalism itself are 
expressions of the philosophic spirit. Internationalism, we 
might say, is a philosophic idea, although this might mean 
to some that we place it among the unrealizable and 
Utopian plans. But this is not the case. The philosophic 
spirit is, in our view, the most practical of moods, since 
it is the creative, liberal, and progressive attitude and the 
source of the most profoundly right judgments even in 
practical affairs. The philosophic spirit is a background, 
we may say, for all the more specific moods, thoughts and 
activities that enter into the idea of internationalism. 

And yet, real and important as the philosophic spirit is, 
we cannot readily discuss it as a definite aspect of educa- 
tion. The reason is that it involves the educational founda- 
tions themselves. The spirit, the method and the content 
of the school are all involved in it. We can, however, 
find some concrete manifestations of this philosophic at- 
titude. In the first place we might say that it is a religious 
mood in education. It is demanded of any school that 
hopes to play a large part in the affairs of the world that, 
in a broad sense, its whole spirit be religious. The school 
must be deeply touched by the sense of a spiritual world. 
The history of the world must be felt to be real — that is, 
as an unfoldment of purpose in the world. The values 
and the meaning of everything are to be appreciated and 
understood, according to this view, through a process of 
enrichment of the mind under the influence of the highest 
social ideals expressed in the most persuasive forms. Edu- 
cation thus centers in the work of developing the power to 



Internationalism and the School 195 

appreciate values in all experience. Anything, too, that 
sustains optimistic moods helps to create the philosophical 
spirit, and one function of this philosophic spirit is to 
forestall the cynical moods and the narrow and prejudiced 
ways of thinking which are among the most dangerous 
tendencies of the times. The tendency to form judgments 
upon insufficient evidence and to act according to narrow 
and one-sided principles is incompatible with the philosophic 
attitude. 

It is of course by no means the actual teaching of philoso- 
phy to every one, or the spreading broadcast of any par- 
ticular philosophical principle that one would advocate 
as a preventive culture or to cure existing evils. It is rather 
a mode of living and of thinking throughout society and 
in all the educational process that is wanted. What we 
need is a better quality of mental product, more capacity 
to penetrate into the heart and substance of experience, 
greater responsiveness to good influences, greater ability to 
judge values, and a more plastic and more freely flowing 
mental life. These are of course large demands and imply 
faith and an interest in a remote future. But a school which 
is religious through and through in its attitude toward life 
and is deeply touched by the influence of art in all its ways of 
dealing with the child will go a long way tozvard fulfilling 
the requirements of an education in the spirit of philosophy. 

Such conclusions as these might at least serve, we should 
suppose, as a working hypothesis, upon the basis of which 
we may consider in detail a variety of questions of the day. 
New problems have arisen before the eyes of the teacher, 
and indeed obtrude themselves upon all who must take 
part in the practical life of others. Some of these problems 
are due to changed external relations of countries to one 
another. Some are problems of internal adjustment and re- 
construction. At least they may so be classified for pur- 
poses of discussion. In reality all changes are too closely 
bound up with one another to allow us to treat them 



196 The Psychology of Nations 

practically as independent. No nation any longer stands 
alone. Internationalism is an idea that penetrates all other 
practical ideas. And no internal problems of any nation 
can be wholly local. The world is in a peculiar but also 
an inspiring way at the present time a single field of labor 
for the educational thinker and indeed the teacher in every 
field of human life. 



CHAPTER IV 

PEACE AND MILITARISM 

Among the many pedagogical questions raised and given 
new significance by the war, is that of the teaching about 
war and about peace. This is a question of ideals, and of 
values and the teaching of history. There are practical and 
superficial questions to be considered. There are also more 
profound problems, since all our teaching of good and 
evil is implicated. Shall we continue, in one moment, to 
assume that war is the greatest glory in the world, and in 
the next to condemn it as the greatest of evils? Shall we 
as teachers take the standpoint of pacifism? Or shall we 
be still apostles of the heroic order? This is really no sim- 
ple matter, and it is not one to be laid aside, directly it 
begins to disturb us, as unimportant. No one passing 
through the experiences of the past four years can have 
wholly escaped this dilemma, or can have kept himself en- 
tirely aloof from the doubts and perplexities that must al- 
ways be attached to religious and philosophical problems of 
good and evil. These doubts and hesitations are necessarily 
increased when we try to become consistent teachers and 
wise counselors of the young. 

It would be of psychological interest at least to collect 
all the arguments and opinions that have been put forth 
about the good and evil of war. There is a tendency for 
moralists to go to extremes. The writers on war are 
likely to be either ardent pacifists or strong militarists. 
They do not try to strike a balance between good and evil, 
but war is either a great blessing upon mankind or the great- 
est curse of the ages. In general they do not seek to base 

197 



198 



The Psychology of Nations 



their conclusions upon ultimate philosophical principles, but 
rather upon moral or biological principles, or, again, upon 
preferences for the activities of war or the arts of peace. 
How very different the good and evil of war and peace may 
seem from different points of view is well shown by the 
following excerpt from a daily newspaper: 



A DEADLY PARALLEL 



This Is the Way Germany 

Talks to Young Boys 

of Scout Age 

" War is the noblest and holiest 
expression of human activity. For 
us, too, the glad great hour of bat- 
tle will strike. Still and deep in 
the German heart must live the 
joy of battle and the longing for 
it. Let us ridicule to the utmost 
the old women in breeches who 
fear war and deplore it as cruel 
and revolting. No; war is beau- 
tiful. Its august sublimity ele- 
vates the human heart beyond the 
earthly and the common. In the 
cloud palace above sit the heroes, 
Frederick the Great and Blucher 
and all the men of action — the 
Great Emperor, Moltke, Roon, 
Bismarck are there as well, but 
not the old women who would 
take away our joy in war. When 
here on earth a battle is won by 
German arms and the faithful 
dead ascend to Heaven, a Pots- 
dam lance corporal will call the 
guard to the door and 'Old Fritz' 
(Frederick the Great), springing 
from his golden throne, will give 
the command to present arms. 
That is the Heaven of Young 
Germany. 

" Because only in war all the 
virtues which militarism regards 
hiehly are given a chance to un- 
fold, because only in war the truly 



This Is What the Scout 

Organization Teaches 

American Boys 

From the " Handbook for Boys," 1 7th 
edition, page 454. 

" The movement is one for ef- 
ficiency and patriotism. It does 
not try to make soldiers of boy 
scouts, but to make boys who will 
turn out as men to be fine citizens, 
and who will if their country 
needs them make better soldiers 
for having been scouts. No one 
can be a good American unless he 
is a good citizen, and every boy 
ought to train himself so that as 
a man he will be able to do his 
full duty to the community. I 
want to see the boy scouts not 
merely utter fine sentiments, but 
act on them, not merely sing ' My 
Country, 'Tis of Thee,' but act in 
a way that will give them a coun- 
try to be proud of. No man is a 
good citizen unless he so acts as 
to show that he actually uses the 
Ten Commandments, and trans- 
lates the Golden Rule into his life 
conduct — and I don't mean by 
this exceptional cases under spec- 
tacular circumstances, but I mean 
applying the Ten Commandments 
and the Golden Rule in the ordi- 
nary affairs of everyday life. I 
hope the boy scouts will practice 
truth and square dealing and 
courage and honesty, so that when 



Peace and Militarism 199 

heroic comes into play, for the as young men they begin taking a 
realization of which on earth mili- part not only in earning their own 
tarism is above all concerned; livelihood, but in governing the 
therefore, it seems to us who are community, they may be able to 
filled with the spirit of militarism show in practical fashion their in- 
that war is a holy thing, the holi- sistence upon the great truth that 
est on earth, and this high esti- the eighth and ninth command- 
mate of war in its turn makes an ments are directly related to 
essential ingredient of the military everyday life, not only between 
spirit. There is nothing that men as such in their private rela- 
trades-people complain of so tions, but between men and the 
much as that we regard it as government of which they are a 
holy." part. Indeed, the boys, even while 

only boys, can have a very real 
effect upon the conduct of the 
grown-up members of the com- 
munity, for decency and square 
dealing are just as contagious as 
vice and corruption." 

The praise of war takes many forms, and invokes many- 
fundamental principles — ethical, aesthetic, biological, socio- 
logical. From Leibnitz' saying that perpetual peace is a 
motto fit only for a graveyard to Moltke's that peace is 
only a dream and not even a beautiful dream, there is a long 
list of defenses of war. This philosophy of war is by no 
means peculiarly German, although German writers seem to 
have been the most ardent apologists of war in recent times. 
Treitschke, Schmitz (29), Scheler (77), Nusbaum (86), 
Arndt, Steinmetz, Lasson, Engelbrecht, Schoonmaker, all 
sing the praises of war as the most glorious work of man, 
or as performing for civilization some noble good. Even 
Hegel said that wars invigorate humanity just as the storm 
preserves the sea from putrescence. 

But this praise of war, we say, is by no means exclusively 
German. Thucydides thought war a noble school of hero- 
ism, the exercise ground of the nations. To Mohammed 
and his Arabs war seemed not only in itself a heroism, we 
are told, but a divine act. This belief in war as divine 
is an idea that is very wide-spread among primitive peoples. 
Cramb, the English writer, says that it is very easy to 



200 The Psychology of Nations 

demonstrate that the glory of battle is an illusion, but by 
the same argument you may demonstrate that all glory 
and life itself is an illusion and a mockery. Redier says 
that the war has brought us all the noble joys so necessary to 
stimulate mankind, and one no longer finds happiness, there- 
fore, in sleeping comfortably, but only in living bravely. 

There is no lack, indeed, of recognition of the heroic mo- 
tive in war. Sometimes the argument appeals to religion, 
sometimes to art, sometimes to morality. Sometimes the 
advocates of war are thinking of war as the great adven- 
ture. War and the thought of war induce an ecstasy, a 
glow of the feelings. War is thought of as an expression of 
normal, healthy life, as making life more abundant and 
more beautiful. War brings out fundamental virtues in 
the individual; it also destroys the weaker and the meaner 
race and leaves the strong and the virtuous. Struggle, they 
say, is the method of civilization. Again, it is urged that 
war is always just in its issues. Like the old ordeal which 
always registered the decrees of heaven, war is the just 
arbiter of fate. The saving of the world through blood- 
shed, the uniting of the world through war, war as the 
great teacher of mankind, war as the creator of great per- 
sonalities — all these are persistent themes in the litera- 
ture of war. There is no place for the pacifist in the minds 
of these apologists of the heroic order. The crises of war 
are historic necessities ; they come when it is time to release 
people from the bondage of the past and to bring in- 
dividualistic generations back to the sense of duty and of 
loyalty to great causes. This is the belief of many, even 
now. 

On the other side we find the great variety of pacifistic 
minds. War to the pacifists is wrong, unholy, morally sin- 
ful, biologically and economically and in every other way 
evil. The conscientious objector's point of view is very 
simple. War antagonizes some principle which is reli- 
giously or morally supreme for him. Therefore there can 



Peace and Militarism 201 

be no justification of war whatever, and it ought to be 
abolished at any price. When you ask the objector to go 
to war, you invite him to commit a flagrant sin. The Eng- 
lish literature of pacifism is full of this moral and religious 
protestation against war which in the minds of the objectors 
becomes a finality beyond which it is futile to ask them to 
go. 

S The psychological and the biological pacifists are hardly 
less emphatic in their condemnation of war. The biological 
thinker undertakes to refute the theory that war is selective. 
He counts the cost of war in terms of human life and of 
racial vitality, and produces a condemning document. That 
war indeed selects but selects unfavorably and in an ad- 
verse direction is the conclusion of many, among them 
Savorgnan in his book " La Guerra e la Populazione," in 
which he calls war dysgenic. The psychologist tends to see 
in war a reversion, a lapse to barbarism. War is a product 
of the original savage in man, whom civilization has never 
tamed, as Freud would say. War lingers because of man's 
love of old institutions. W r e cling to old habits and cus- 
toms, which take on a semblance of the aesthetic, because of 
their' antiquity and old associations. This is the explana- 
tion by Nicolai. Russell thinks men fight because they are 
still ignorant and despotic. Patrick thinks of war as a slip 
in the psychic machinery. MacCurdy (37) and others 
think of war as a mental or a social disease. 

Upon the hardships of war, its economic futility and 
its sheer senselessness, when looked at from the stand- 
point of any rational desire, many base their conclusion 
that war is evil. The working man and all the masses are 
likely to concur in this opinion. When they examine war 
they see that they themselves as they think are used in 
the interest of the few, that they shed their blood for a 
glory in which they do not share. They say, all men are 
brothers, and so why should they kill one another. Men 
seem more real to them than do boundaries of countries 



202 The Psychology of Nations 

which they never see, and the interests of wealth that is 
also invisible. 

Such thought as this has behind it some of the most 
powerful minds, as we know. It is Tolstoi's philosophy, 
and it is the argument of such men as Novicow. The pro- 
fessional economist and the student of history add their 
protests. They say that military peoples fade away, while 
the peaceful live and prosper, that " the country whose 
military power is irresistible is doomed." These are the 
words of Roberts. Some try to demonstrate that nothing 
is gained economically by war; that all the work of war is 
destructive, to every one engaged in it. It is argued that 
the nation that is suited to live will prevail without wars; 
and that without this inner superiority, war will avail noth- 
ing. War is bad business, in the opinion of these economic 
thinkers. War is like setting the dog on the customer at 
the door, the practical man in England complained at the 
beginning of the present war. As to war being associated 
with intelligence and with virtue in nations, or as to its ever 
producing either intellectual or moral qualities, many would 
flatly deny that war ever has such a result. The opposite 
would seem nearer the truth to them. Military nations are 
unintelligent nations, and militarism is always brutalizing. 

Such pacifism and the dream of universal peace are no 
new ideas in the world. Like the philosophy of war 
pacifism has a long history. There have been pacifists 
everywhere and presumably at all times, since pacifism is 
quite as much a temperament as it is an idea or a philosophy. 
Cramb tells us that all recent centuries have had their doc- 
trines of pacifism, each century having its own characteristic 
variety. In the time of the Marlborough wars, there ap- 
peared the book of Abbe de St. Pierre denouncing all 
wars. In the middle of the nineteenth century there is the 
doctrine of the Manchester school, maintaining that the 
peace of Europe must be secured not by religion, but by 
the cooperation of the industrial forces of the continent. 



Peace and Militarism 203 

Finally, says Cramb, we see the characteristic thought of 
the twentieth century in the position that war is bad be- 
cause it is contrary to social well-being and is economically 
profitless, alike to the victor and the vanquished. This is 
the pacifism of the socialist who holds that the ties of com- 
mon labor and economic state are fundamental, and divi- 
sions into nationality are secondary and unimportant; and 
that militarism belongs to the pernicious state of society 
which perpetuates capitalism and privilege and to govern- 
ment as a function of the favored classes. 

This is certainly not the place to try to put order into 
this conflicting mass of opinion about war and peace by 
working out the principles of a philosophy of good and 
evil, since this would mean to attack one of the most funda- 
mental of all problems of philosophy. It seems to be plain, 
however, that neither upon biological grounds nor by ethical 
principles, nor by finding any consensus in the desires and 
opinions of thinkers can we reach any hard and fast con- 
clusions about the good and evil of war. It is rather 
by a broad interpretation of the world and of his- 
tory and the nature of national consciousness, by some 
genetic view of national life, that we are most likely to see 
our way toward a practical view of the present good and 
evil of war. War is a phase of the whole process of social 
development of nations. We think of nations as living 
and growing, and of a world which is gradually maturing. 
War obtains a natural explanation on sociological and 
psychological principles, not as a disease, but as a natural 
consequence and condition of the formation of nations, 
or of any type of horde or group. In the course of 
the development of nations we see psychological factors 
coming more and more to the front. Desires which are 
more or less consciously avowed become the motives of his- 
tory. It is in the play of these desires: their fixation, 
their generalization, and transformation, the manner in 
which they become attached to specific objects, that we seek 



204 The Psychology of Nations 

the explanation of wars and of the especial psychology of 
nations. Nations have lived secluded and guarded lives, 
because of the nature of the desires which were most funda- 
mental in their lives, and the objects upon which these de- 
sires have become directed. Now nations show some signs 
of emerging from their seclusion, of abandoning their ambi- 
tions of empire, and leading a more complex and more prac- 
tical life. 

In this progress we see the possibility of the final dis- 
appearance of war. But we have no right to pervert either 
history or education in the effort to eliminate war, or even 
to pass judgments upon war prematurely or upon the basis 
of personal preferences, or the moods of any moment. The 
whole world might, conceivably, be brought together and 
be made to declare solemnly that there should be no more 
war. Nations would thereby voluntarily relinquish their 
aggressive thoughts, put aside the love they have for the 
heroic and take justice and peace as their watchwords. 
And all this would seem ideal. But if the elimination of 
war should mean that we have no longer anything for 
which men are willing to die, if merely to escape from war 
we voluntarily sacrifice good that more than counterbalances 
the evil we overcome, we should say that peace had been 
bought at too high a price. Terrible as war is, it cannot 
be judged by itself alone. We have a right to look for- 
ward to a time when there shall be no more war, just as 
everywhere it seems to be instinctive for us to try to 
gain good without its attendant trouble and evil. In the 
meantime the world had best busy itself, mainly, in our 
view, with creating those things that are best, rather than 
in destroying those things that are worst. Nations, like 
individuals, must lead bravely hazardous lives, without too 
much thought of dangers. Peace as a sole program for 
the making of history appears to be too narrow, and espe- 
cially too unproductive. Internationalism that is merely 
a combination of peoples to prevent war is not very in- 



Peace and Militarism 205 

spiring, especially since it is doubtful whether it even 
leads to peace. A broad historical view that will enable 
us just now to make good come out of the evil of war 
will be a better organ of conscious evolution than a philoso- 
phy of peace can possibly be. 

Such views as these give us at least some clews to the 
educational and pedagogical problems of war and peace. 
We can distinguish between an education which deals spe- 
cifically with such problems, endeavoring to treat them 
sharply and with finality, making clear moral decisions, and 
an education which by enriching the mind and by educating 
all the selective faculties leads to an appreciation of all 
great practical and moral questions as aspects of the whole 
of history and of life. 

Let us see what the specific teaching of peace may and 
may not include. First of all we cannot, for educational 
purposes, judge everything in the lives of nations by 
moral principles. The ideal of universal brotherhood and 
cooperation, of sacrifice and altruism, cannot be realized in 
the present stage of history. On the other hand, the 
stern picture of justice is one that fits into the present mood 
of the world. Justice is the natural link between individual- 
ism and altruism. A world determined upon seeing jus- 
tice done, a world which, without setting absolute values 
upon peace and war, does distinguish between just and 
unjust wars, between the demands and the needs of peoples, 
leans toward the moral life. It has little to say about duties 
as yet, or comparatively little, but it has a strong concep- 
tion of rights. A deep enough interest in justice, by its own 
momentum, introduces duties into the practical life. In 
time the world will perhaps not be satisfied with seeing and 
recognizing justice, and ensuring it in great crises; it will 
make justice as a matter of course. 

This idea of justice seems, on the whole, to be the best 
basis for the teaching now of international morality. The 
teaching of pacifism, enlarging upon the biological waste 



206 The Psychology of Nations 

of war, trying to present the realism of war in its worst 
light in order to overcome the warlike spirit and to assist the 
doctrines of internationalism to take effect upon the mind 
seems to be the wrong way of teaching peace. We seem 
to be obligated to teach war as it is. We cannot conceal 
its heroic side for fear of perpetuating war, and we must not 
conceal the brutality of war for fear of destroying morale 
and the fighting spirit. And it is to be much doubted 
whether it is ever necessary to teach history unfairly and 
one-sidedly in times either of war or of peace. We de- 
pend upon larger effects and deeper judgments than can be 
produced by selecting and distorting the facts. Nothing 
is meaner in national life than dishonest history. 

Education in the ideal of peace, which we may hope 
to be the state of the world in the future, will be an ad- 
justment of the mind to new and practical modes of life 
rather than the establishing of a principle. The educated 
attitude of mind which will best safeguard the peace of the 
world must include an intelligent knowledge of all the agen- 
cies proposed to aid in establishing this state of harmony 
toward which we look forward. We must all know about 
arbitration, leagues of nations, courts of honor, understand 
diplomacy better and the arguments for disarmament, under- 
stand the economic and the industrial situation, the possi- 
bilities of cooperation, reduction of the rights and privileges 
of classes, democratic movements. The inculcation of such 
knowledge is an education for peace. There is little that is 
abstruse in any of these ideas, and the very young child is 
not too young to know something of these wider aspects of 
the social life. All these may be presented in a concrete 
form as a part of the work of conveying a knowledge of cur- 
rent history. 

We may think of various cures for war, and various 
efforts that might be made educationally to prevent 
war. Peace might effectually be cultivated by an educa- 
tional propaganda. But after all it is not such cures of 



Peace and Militarism 207 

war as this that we are most concerned about in the 
work of education. We might even tend to establish in 
this way a peace which would be detrimental to the higher 
interests of civilization. A true educational philosophy, at 
any rate, is not to be dislodged from its purpose of keeping 
education constructive rather than inhibitory. This insti- 
tution of education must not be too much influenced by the 
temporary moods of the day, by the present gloomy evi- 
dences of the devastation of war. We must teach and 
prepare for an abundant life in which there is glory and 
wide opportunity, and in which the motives of power may 
be satisfied. Then peace can take care of itself. But this 
abundant life must be a life of activity, not of mere pa- 
triotism and subjective glorification and nationalistic in- 
terest. Vanity, the low order of enthusiasms, the glory of 
display, can no longer have a place in this national life. 

There appears to be a pedagogical lesson in the contrast 
between the heroic and the moral view of teaching war and 
peace illustrated by the German philosophy of war and 
the ideal of the Boy Scout organization. Deducting some- 
thing for literary exaggeration, we may say that educa- 
tion cannot afford to neglect either of these attitudes, but 
must indeed in some way combine them. The exaggera- 
tion consists on one side in praising the specific act of war ; 
but on the other side there is plainly lacking something of 
the dramatic appeal which any ideal life for the young must 
have. War is an evil, but the spirit that makes war is by 
no means an evil. The philosophy of war proves its fail- 
ure by ignoring the moral ideal altogether, or regarding 
morality as something solely national, but the other, it may 
be, puts the moral ideal in a pedagogically impossible posi- 
tion. Both the content and the form must be taken into 
account in any educational plan that hopes to exert power or 
to be influential in any important way now, and it is the 
form which, more than anything else, is still lacking in our 
whole procedure of education. 



208 The Psychology of Nations 

Preparedness and Military Training 

Military training has now of course become a practical 
question with us and with every nation. It is the military 
use of military education that must first of all be con- 
sidered. For that reason it must primarily be a problem 
upon which political authorities and military experts must 
decide. These experts must be competent to tell us what 
military equipment is necessary at any time to meet the 
requirements of our political situation, and they must be 
able to advise about the amount and kind of actual military 
training necessary to make this physical equipment most 
effective. All this, plainly, must be provided whether it be 
good or bad from a general educational standpoint. But 
preparedness and national defense mean, of course, more 
than the possession of guns and more than military train- 
ing as such. And there can be no hard and fast line be- 
tween military preparedness and the wider technical pre- 
paredness in which all the equipment and skill of scientific 
and mechanical activities of the country are always ready 
to be mobilized in the defense of it; or between these and 
the still more general preparedness through the organiza- 
tion and control of the human factor in ways that are 
not specifically military or mechanically technical at all. 

If preparation for defense is by no means exhausted by 
military training, on the other hand not all military train- 
ing is intended for defense. Decision about the actual 
amount and kind of military training, we say, may be left 
to the expert, but it is for the psychologist and the educator 
to decide whether we need a mere minimum of such train- 
ing or a general military training for educational purposes. 
After all, however, this is perhaps more a matter of taste 
in educational practices than of learning. There is plenty 
of opinion at least on both sides. Some maintain that mili- 
tary discipline is of very great benefit to the man and to 
society. From the German point of view it is the equivalent 



Peace and Militarism 209 

of hygiene for the individual. It is a national regimen 
for physical and mental health. It is also the symbol and 
the expression of social solidarity. Many believe that the 
discipline of soldiering would be especially good for all 
American boys. But there is no dearth of evidence on the 
other side — that military training in so far as it is really 
conducted in the military manner is brutalizing. 

After all, we say this may be a matter of preference. 
Some like military discipline in the schools and everywhere ; 
some do not. The present writer for one will confess that 
he does not. It is not the danger of making a people war- 
like that one sees in it, so much as the certainty of intro- 
ducing into all the daily life a spirit that is inconsistent with 
our stage of civilization and with the most wholesome spirit 
of education. It savors of the unprogressive. It means, in 
our opinion, the introduction into the school, in a far too 
easy and simple way, and consequently at far too low a level, 
something that ought to be put into education in a differ- 
ent manner. The sense of solidarity and the idealism 
which the German has found in his military discipline we 
must express in some other way. It is especially the un- 
productiveness of military life, and the constant suggestion 
of that which is archaic without either the practical setting 
or the ornamental life to which such things belong, that 
are especially to be charged against militarism. 

We ought to ask, rather, how peace morale, and the 
essentials of the warlike spirit may be maintained without 
military training. Is it not rather by way of the more gen- 
eral and untechnical processes of education which make 
for physical expertness, by fundamental social education, 
by giving attention to our foundations of religious educa- 
tion, that we shall be able to create and sustain the most 
efficient morale? The best foundation for all necessary 
military activities of a free people appears to be a by-prod- 
uct, so to speak, of peaceful life sustained at a high point of 
efficiency and enthusiasm. Military training disconnected 



210 The Psychology of Nations 

from its immediate use and application in war must appear 
to some and indeed to many as a misfit in modern civilized 
life. This is not an argument for pacifism, however. The 
war has taught us that militarism and military capacity in 
high degree may spring up from very peaceful soil, and 
also that military training, however perfect, is no substi- 
tute for the generic virtues out of which courage and pa- 
triotism grow. In the long run will it not be the country 
that can do without military training that will have the 
advantage? Or the country in which military prepared- 
ness is so merged in everything else as to be indistinguishable 
from the rest of life? Is there not, in a word, a prepared- 
ness that will make a country superior and safe both in war 
and in peace? 



CHAPTER V 

THE TEACHING OF PATRIOTISM 

It would be hard to find a word (unless it be democracy) 
about which so many questions gather as now cling to the 
word " patriotism." Patriotism is praised as the highest 
virtue ; it is also cursed as the cause of war. Some think of 
it as the sole cause of war. Some would like to see it dis- 
appear for the reason that they believe it at best an old and 
out-lived social virtue, now having become merely orna- 
mental and an obstacle to the true socialization of the world. 
Some think patriotism still the center of the moral and the 
social life. 

This is not the place to attempt a psychological analysis 
of patriotism, but we may at least try to enumerate the 
principal factors in it, and say what we think patriotism 
as a virtue — or a vice — is. Patriotism in our view is 
normally loyalty to country as a functioning unit in a 
world of nations. It is devotion to all the aspects and 
functions of a country as an historical entity. We must 
think of these historical entities, moreover, as leading lives 
in which, although their own ambitions for honor and 
greatness are legitimate, there must be a practical recogni- 
tion of the legitimacy of similar interests on the part of 
all other nations, and in which the recognition of the com- 
mon interests of nations is also freely made. Since na- 
tions perform no one single function and have no single mo- 
tive of life in their normal state, patriotism can be no 
devotion to a single purpose or cause. Such patriotism 
as this, we may say, does not antagonize internationalism. 
Loyalty to country is loyalty to the functions and interests 
that properly belong to country. The individual, the fam- 



212 The Psychology of Nations 

ily, the country and all intervening groups and entities are 
natural formations. To each of these entities there is 
due a loyalty precisely measured by the character of the 
functions which these entities perform. 

This view of patriotism is plainly, both in its theoretical 
aspect and its practical consequences, widely different from 
those that end in pure internationalism. Its essential fea- 
ture is that it recognizes the validity of all entities and 
groups about which deep feeling has grown up. This 
means, of course, that as criteria of social values these 
feelings are placed ahead of certain logical or scientific con- 
siderations. Pure internationalism of the intellectual type 
recognizes the validity only of the whole world group. 
Nicolai, for example, says that there is a morality and 
there are rights pertaining to the individual and to the 
whole of humanity, but all intervening groups are temporary 
and artificial. That, certainly, we should not agree with. 
The coming greater coordination of the world we may sup- 
pose will deepen and intensify patriotism, rather than di- 
minish it. The homogeneity toward which the biologists tell 
us we are tending and ought to approach is one in which, it 
is likely, still sharper national outlines may well appear. 
The ambitions, the functions, and the culture of nations 
ought to be made clearer rather than be lost in the coming 
internationalism. We shall still in the Hegelian sense find 
our reality in and through the state. An aroused sense of 
the function and worth of country will be the basis of 
patriotism. Advancement toward internationalism will be 
made by a generalized patriotism rather than by outgrow- 
ing patriotism. That is, it is by passing from a deepened 
loyalty to country through a sense of the validity and right 
of the patriotism of all peoples that international social 
consciousness will be developed. 

So all those very numerous views of patriotism which 
assert that it is only through a decline of patriotism that 
a rational international order can ever be established, ap- 



The Teaching of Patriotism 213 

pear to be wrong. A fundamental question is at issue 
here. It concerns in part the criteria of valuation in the 
field of the social life. The kind of cosmopolitanism and 
internationalism that demands the final abrogation of the 
sentiment of patriotism is, as we have intimated, a rational- 
istic doctrine. It is an attempt to extend objective prin- 
ciples into the realm of social values. Reason tells us, 
they say, that we ought to organize universally and obliterate 
national lines. Reason tells us we should make no distinc- 
tion between ourselves and strangers, between enemies and 
allies. But by the same rationalism we may break up any 
loyalty. Patriotism is an inner, a spiritual force, and it 
has its roots in moods and forms of appreciation which have 
a certain finality about them, for the reason that they are 
deposits from the whole course of human history. Veblen 
says it is a matter of habit to what particular nationality a 
man will become attached on arriving at years of discre- 
tion. That is true, and it is of course the whole secret of 
loyalty. But it is not a matter of unimportance whether 
a man shall become attached to any country. It is the 
dynamic power of loyalty that is in question, if we consider 
its practical value. Loyalty grows because it has a use, 
which is related to the most basic feelings. It is not a 
product of reason, and cannot justly be judged on purely 
rational grounds. 

Any political ideal, or any plan for a world order, that 
would minimize patriotism is unnatural. The forms 
of socialism that do this and the laissez-faire tendencies ap- 
pear to have left out of the reckoning some of the modes 
of evaluating experience which are most basic. We may 
recognize all the excess of provincialism in the native pa- 
triotism of the peasant, and all the egoistic motives in the 
patriotism of the aristocrat and the militarist, but still we see 
no place in the world for the man without a country. It 
is not yet the workmen of the cities, who say that all men 
are brothers, who can lead us to a better social order. 



214 The Psychology of Nations 

Patriotism must be educated, modernized, made more pro- 
ductive, but certainly its work is not yet done. It cannot be 
cast aside as something archaic and only a part of the orna- 
mental and useless encumbrances of life. It is not by 
weakening loyalty to country, but by strengthening it, tlmt 
internationalism will be made secure. If patriotism fits into 
modern life like sand in the machinery, as Veblen says, we 
must see how patriotism may be made to do better service. 

Some views about patriotism which thus disparage it 
seem to be based upon a biological conception of it. Not 
a few writers apparently think of patriotism as a fixed 
trait of the human organism, even as a kind of mendelian 
character unrelated" to other social qualities. This trait 
antagonizes social progress, but it is preserved because of 
secondary values which it represents, such as moral or 
aesthetic values. According to these views patriotism may 
be complex, but it acts like a unitary character. It is sub- 
ject, theoretically, to selection, but as a matter of fact it 
remains a strong factor in the temperament of nearly all 
races. 

But in our view patriotism is something less precise than 
all this would imply. It is a form in which the most fun- 
damental and general of desires are expressed, in becoming 
fixated upon their most natural and necessary objects. It 
is an aspect of the whole process of development of the af- 
fective life. Leaving out patriotism (if such a thing were 
possible) would mean a break in the continuity of the social 
life. It would leave one group of functions without their 
natural support in desire. Economists sometimes seem to 
leave out of account the profound emotional forces and 
the irresistible tendencies which make social groups. They 
want organizations without the moods and impulses by 
which alone social bodies are formed or sustained ; and they 
expect to see organization broken up or interest in it lost 
while all the conditions that keep alive the passion for it 
are intact. Patriotism and the existence of nations seem. 



The Teaching of Patriotism 215 

however, to be the opposite sides of the same fact. And we 
may assume that so long as nations exist, at any rate, pa- 
triotism will exist, and one of the most necessary functions 
of public education will be the regulation of the motives 
and feelings which are contained in this sentiment. 

Patriotism is first of all to be considered, then, as a 
phase of the social life as a whole, rather than as an unique 
emotion or a special variety of loyalty. It is a way in 
which the sum of tendencies that enter into the social life 
become fixated upon certain qualities of the environment, or 
upon certain objects. Patriotism will best be understood 
in a practical way by observing its objects. Patriotism is a 
total mood; country is a total object. But the mood of 
patriotism expresses varied desires, and the object of pa- 
triotism is a highly complex and variable object. In being 
loyal to or devoted to country in the sense which we 
usually mean when we say one is patriotic, we are devoted 
to at least the following objects : 1 ) physical country as 
home; 2) the ways, customs, standards and beliefs of the 
country; 3) the group of people constituting the nation; 
and here race, social solidarity, ideal constructions of an 
united people having common purposes and possessions en- 
ter; 4) leaders; 5) country as an historical entity having 
rights and interests — a living being having experiences, 
ideals and characteristics. The educational problem is of 
course the regulation of the attachment of the individuals 
of a nation to these objects. In one sense this educational 
problem of patriotism is nothing less than that of de- 
veloping social consciousness itself. It is precisely the 
task of fostering or creating in the child the basis of all 
loyalty. Given a loyal mind in the child and a normal 
environment, we need to be concerned but little about the 
causes and the groups upon which that loyalty will expend 
itself, for the conditions are all present for forming an at- 
tachment to every natural group. Considered generically 
and psychologically there is no patriotism, we say, marked 



216 The Psychology of Nations 

off from everything else, and there is no one object that 
excites patriotic loyalty. All educational influences that 
strengthen attachment to home, all social feeling, devo- 
tion to the ways of any group and obedience to its stand- 
ards, respect for all law and authority, all appreciation of 
historic relations, help to develop patriotism, merely be- 
cause country, in these aspects, is an omnipresent object 
to which the feelings thus engendered will automatically be- 
come to some extent attached. 

The first task in the teaching of patriotism (first at 
least as regards the obviousness of the need) is to give all 
children a vivid sense of country as physical object, and 
a deep aesthetic appreciation of this object — although of 
course this idea of physical country cannot be detached 
from everything else. Each country has its different prob- 
lem. Ours is to create a total country, in the imagination 
of the young. A German writer not long ago predicted 
that the future of America lay in the direction of break- 
ing up into a little England, a little Ireland, and a little of 
the other nationalities here represented. That particular 
danger may seem remote enough, but in another way we do 
continue to be lacking in unity. Our patriotism has been too 
local, and America, even after the great war, is to some 
extent still a collection of geographical regions. New Eng- 
land, the South, the Coast are more real to many than coun- 
try as a whole. Our great distances, and the impossibility 
of clearly imagining them have necessarily presented ob- 
stacles thus far to a unified image of country. The time 
may come, and perhaps soon, when such a divided conscious- 
ness of country will be a grave flaw in our national life. 

It must be a serious function of some kind of geography 
to give reality to the idea of country, although of course 
we cannot separate entirely geographical from historical 
idea of country. The teaching of the geography of the 
native land must be different from other geography. Na- 
tive land must have a warmth and home feeling about it 



The Teaching of Patriotism 217 

that other countries do not have, but as yet the psychological 
conditions for this have apparently not been worked out. 
With our present facilities in pictorial art, the geographical 
element in the idea of country seems controllable. The 
minds of children are exceedingly impressionable in this 
direction. Intensity of feeling and vividness of imagina- 
tion are at the disposal of the educator. The love of color, 
especially, must be used to make lasting impressions upon 
the mind. We need to notice also that the idea of physical 
country that enters most into patriotic feeling is not an 
idea of city streets but of the open country. It is the coun- 
try that inspires the strongest home feeling, and it is the 
country that is the basis of the sense of changelessness and 
eternity of native land, that is a strong element in pa- 
triotic sentiment. This element of patriotism, it is plain, is 
something aesthetic. It is not so much a moral loyalty 
to country that is inspired by the everlasting hills, as an 
aesthetic love of it as the home land. This aesthetic love 
of the home land is a response to such stimuli as the beau- 
tiful arouses everywhere. It is susceptible, therefore, to 
all the influences of art — of music, picture, symbol; these 
must all be employed in teaching patriotism. The theme 
of home is especially sensitive to the effects of music. 
It is this idea of home, enlarged and enriched by pictorial 
representation of country, deeply impressed and influenced 
by music, and unified and imbued with the feeling of per- 
sonal possession by the story of country that is the core of 
patriotic feeling. It is the function of art, especially of 
music, to help to make the home feeling of the child normal 
and enthusiastic — to raise it above the stage of being an 
" anxiety of animal life," as Nicolai terms the primitive love 
of home. Art must help to remove the fears and depres- 
sions that may lurk in the idea of home, which are great 
obstacles to the development of the higher devotions. It 
is the lack of normal love of home in the city, we should 
say, that makes socialism and all forms of internationalism 



218 The Psychology of Nations 

that breed so rapidly there such dangerous moods in a 
democracy. Without true home love, we may conclude, 
the wider loyalties can never be quite wholesome, although 
they may be intense and fanatical. 

The second element in patriotism we identify as the love 
of, or loyalty to, the sum of the customs, beliefs, and stand- 
ards that make up the mores of a people. A peculiarly 
perplexing educational problem arises, since there are two 
opposite evils to be avoided. We may too readily cultivate 
a spirit which either takes the form of a narcissistic love of 
one's own ways, or which, extraverted, so to speak, becomes 
a fanatical ambition to impose one's own culture upon the 
world: or, on the other hand we might become too self- 
critical, too cosmopolitan, and too receptive toward all 
foreign culture. National conceit, complacency and des- 
tinism face us in one direction, the danger of losing our 
identity and our individuality and our mission in the other. 
These problems of course confront all nations; they are 
especially urgent in America, because of the composite na- 
ture of our national life and the rapid changes that take 
place in it, and also because of the ideal nature of the bond 
that holds us together. We are still a somewhat inchoate 
and flowing mass of social elements, imperfectly coordi- 
nated, manifestly, yet deeply united by ideals which appeal 
to very deep emotions. Our work is to maintain social soli- 
darity, preserve and educate certain fundamental qualities 
of our national life which are our real claims to individuality 
as a people. These essential traits, perhaps because of our 
newness as a form of civilization, appear to be less clearly 
defined, less definitely represented in institutions, and to be 
more abstract than the qualities that make up the essential 
character of other peoples. 

Our educational problem is, naturally, different from all 
others. We are committed to an idea of liberty. We make 
this principle of freedom the dominant in all our national 
life. We have not tried, and cannot consistently attempt to 



The Teaching of Patriotism 219 

centralize our educational institutions very much, or even 
allow our culture to become crystallized into a definite type, 
for this would be almost as bad as denying our principle of 
religious freedom. But we cannot, in the other direction, 
become too diversified intellectually, and still less in regard 
to more fundamental aspects of life, for this would break up 
our unity altogether, or determine it more and more in the 
direction of political coercion. Thus far, it appears, it has 
been our great virtue as a people that we have remained 
united by emotional forces, or by the suggestive power of 
an idea. Sooner or later we shall need to see whither our 
present tendencies lead, and education must in all probability 
be put to work to control and regulate the elements that 
make for unity and for disruption in our life. Our work as 
educators zvill be to maintain a working harmony in the af- 
fective and instinctive life of the people. We need now, 
and we shall need more and more, religious, moral and 
aesthetic unity in our life as a nation — not a forced and 
superficial agreement, but a deep harmony of ideals and 
moods. This purpose must never be lost sight of by the 
educator. It must be made to pervade all our educational 
philosophy and all our plans for the school. This educa- 
tional problem exists of course everywhere in some degree, 
and in regard to all manner of social groups. But American 
life as a whole is peculiarly a growth in which diverse and 
even divergent elements must continue to be brought to- 
gether and held together through the power of ideas which 
are subject to many influences. Diversity and differentia- 
tion are added as fast as the process of assimilation can be 
carried on. There can be no closing up of differences in a 
final perfection and security. 

Must we not, then, make the education of instincts and 
feelings, and the control of the basic moods, rather than the 
development and stimulation of specialization and differen- 
tiation our first and chief concern? Must we not do this 
even at a loss of efficiency in some directions, if necessary? 



220 The Psychology of Nations 

Certainly we must not go too fast nor too far towards in- 
dustrialism. To control any tendency to over differentia- 
tion and industrialism that is now likely to occur we must 
have a broad humanitarianism and a humanistic ideal of 
culture (by which we do not mean classicism). The shar- 
ing of all experiences that represent our spirit and purpose 
and American ideas, and equal opportunity to realize them, 
must be our thought in planning our educational work. 
The future of America may well depend upon our power, or 
upon the power of our original idea, to hold people together 
by the essential moods in which our American ideas are rep- 
resented. The production, out of these elemental moods, of 
common interests on a high level will be, we take it, the 
only preventive in the end of the growth of common inter- 
ests on a low level, which is always threatened in democ- 
racies, and is the way democracies tend to destroy them- 
selves by their democracy. Education in the fundamentals 
of industrial life, in social relations, in play and in art, in 
religion, is what we most need — the latter, we may con- 
clude, most of all. We must have in some way a greater 
religious unity and more religion, not by attempting an im- 
possible amalgamation of creeds as was promulgated by 
some of the founders of the New Japan, but by an education 
that includes and brings forth all that is common in religion. 
That at least is the only kind of unity that offers hope finally 
of making a world safe with democracy in it. This is not 
a plea for a back-to-nature movement, for the simple life, 
for a life which tends away from industrialism. Indus- 
trialism will go on, if for no other reason, because pastoral 
or agricultural peoples would soon be at a disadvantage in 
an industrial world as it is organized now, for want of rapid 
increase in population. But it is implied that industry itself 
must be made suitable for the democratic life. It means 
that we must go back of the identities of language and 
obedience to common laws, and take as our educational 



The Teaching of Patriotism 221 

foundations that which American life is in truth based upon : 
physical power and motor freedom, the sense of liberty, the 
colonial spirit of comradeship and devotion to common 
cause, the ideal of an abundant and enthusiastic life. 
Merely becoming conscious of these and observing their 
meaning and their place in our national life is in itself a 
large contribution to the sources out of which patriotism 
may be drawn. When oar patriotism is sincere enough so 
that we shall be willing to sacrifice for country our religious 
intolerance and bigotry, our social antipathies, and our in- 
dustrial advantages, we shall have a morale which for peace 
or for war will be wholly sufficient. 

Must our ambition be to teach American children that 
American ways are the best, and that these ways ought to 
be established in the world? There is both an evil and a 
good, both an absurdity and a sublime loyalty in the view 
which all nations have, that their own culture and life are 
the best. This conceit is in part a product of isolation, and 
is pure provincialism. But it is also of the very essence of 
the reality feeling and the sense of solidarity of peoples and 
of their loyalty to country. It must not be dealt with too 
ruthlessly. There is a primitive stratum of it that must 
remain in all peoples. Nations, however benighted, will 
not be dispossessed of this idea, but experience and educa- 
tion will make nations more discriminating so that they 
can at least see what is essential and what is superficial in 
their own characteristics. Certainly whatever is ethical in 
our foundations we, and all other peoples, will be expected 
to hold to. We feel it a duty to spread our moral truth 
abroad and our mores are necessarily right for us, and this 
idea of Tightness of mores must imply a desire to make them 
prevail in the world. We may recognize, abstractly, other 
standards of conduct, but there is something in moral belief 
which, of course, cannot voluntarily be changed, and which 
must stand for the ultimately real in consciousness so long 



222 The Psychology of Nations 

as it is held to be so by the mass of the people. This must 
extend also to aesthetic standards, and to all final judgments 
of values to some extent. 

For these reasons we must suppose that the spirit of com- 
petition among nations, certainly so far as it concerns the 
ambition for empires of the spirit, must remain. Belief on 
the part of a people in the superiority of their own culture 
cannot and should not be eliminated. By this spirit the 
good, we may be sure, will prevail, but prevail only through 
opposition and competition. There can be no real compro- 
mise in the field of these moral possessions and apprecia- 
tions. We must be Americans, and react with American 
ideas. True nationalists everywhere appear to recognize 
and to be guided by this truth. We cannot voluntarily lay 
aside our own beliefs nor help believing they are right, al- 
though we may see that were we differently situated we 
might change them. 

There are three things at least, as regards our mores 
that cannot be accomplished. For this we may take our evi- 
dence and our warning from Germany. Culture cannot be 
spread by force, since force does not conquer spirit. De- 
votion to the basic principles of one's civilization cannot 
rationally nor safely be extended to include all customs and 
manners, so that we may assume that there is a right way in 
everything which is ours and a wrong way which is foreign. 
The mores of a people cannot be changed or manipulated 
by education and propaganda without uprooting the moral 
structures of society. When we begin to practice a Social- 
politik we enter upon dangerous ground. 

Are we not, then, to take the attitude in education that 
our culture is an experimental culture and represents an ex- 
perimental civilisation? Although for us our ways and 
beliefs are final criteria of values in conduct, and we cannot 
hope or wish to free ourselves from them or to be guided by 
objective data, still we put them forward in the spirit of the 
enquirer, rather than as eternal principles. If this be right, 



The Teaching of Patriotism 223 

we are not to guard our civilization jealously, hedge it about 
with national jealousy and bigotry but rather send our cul- 
ture abroad on a mission. We are to understand and to 
teach the culture of every other nation sympathetically, 
trusting to our own foundations to hold firm. We must be 
so fortified in our own virtue that we shall not be afraid 
to send our spirit abroad to compete with whatever it shall 
meet in the old world or the new. This impulse to extend 
one's culture and philosophy is a deep one, and we believe 
it to be well-grounded. It has been said that the deepest 
impulse of British imperialism has been to extend English 
ways of thought throughout the world. There is truth in 
this. We may conclude also that unless a nation can feel 
sincerely that it is founded upon something that ought to 
endure and at least to have an opportunity to become uni- 
versal, it lacks a growth principle and its civilization is not 
very secure. Certainly it lacks a great pedagogical advan- 
tage in all the internal work of education. 

The work of the intellectual leaders of a people is to un- 
cover this kernel of sincere belief and worth, and strip na- 
tionalism at the same time of its encrustations of vanity and 
deception. There are, we may suppose, at the bottom of 
every nation's consciousness such sincere principles which 
are entitled to a fair field in the competition of the civiliza- 
tions and the cultures of the world. We may be sure that 
there is Americanism that needs to be taught both for the 
sake of the world and for our own sake; something which 
constitutes our best contribution to an experimental world 
in which the over-emphasis of all sincere principles can ulti- 
mately do no harm. Americanism, with all the errors it 
may contain, and all the limitations it may have as a uni- 
versal principle is better for us and for all, we may believe, 
than any dispassionate and well considered intellectualism, 
or a cosmopolitanism that is based upon a fear of provincial- 
ism. Let us be prepared, therefore, to go forth not to con- 
quer but to participate in the life of the world. 



224 The Psychology of Nations 

As regards materials by means of which we are to teach 
a patriotism that shall be a strong devotion to the mores of 
the nation, there appear to be three important elements. 
We have, first, a literature which contains in part at least 
the spirit of our national life, although it does so only in 
part. Secondly, we have a beginning at least of an inter- 
pretation of American life through an American history 
that is to be something more than a history of political 
events, and shall be a true history of the American people. 
This history must include the history of our ideas and our 
ideals, our literature, institutions, art, and be indeed a true 
social history. This history must be the main source book 
for teaching what our country has meant to those who have 
lived in it, and what these people have really been and done. 
This is national character study. Character study, a truly 
psychological and interpretative history, should teach us 
what we are likely to do and what we ought to do in all 
typical situations with which we are likely to be confronted. 
How far we are as yet from such a general knowledge in 
regard to ourselves needs hardly to be suggested. The third 
element in this aspect of the teaching of patriotism is some- 
thing more tangible and more immediately practical. Our 
ideals have to some extent at least been crystallized in our 
institutions, where they will still further be elaborated. 
The participation on the part of all in some way in these 
institutions is a part of our required training for good 
American life. A book knowledge of institutions is, of 
course, better than none at all, but there is no reason why 
knowledge should end there. All people, especially those 
now being educated, ought to have more direct and more 
intimate part in all the representative institutions of our 
country, even in the political institutions, and perhaps in 
them most of all. Americanism, whatever else it may be, 
must be a practical Americanism. It must have ideals and 
clear visions, it goes without saying, but it is the making and 
shaping of institutions by living in and through them that 



The Teaching of Patriotism 225 

must be the main feature of our social life and of our edu- 
cation. When the individual and the social form are 
molded and developed together, patriotism will be a natural 
phase of mental growth. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE TEACHING OF PATRIOTISM {continued) 

Patriotism we thought to be, in the third place, devotion to 
the group. Here the problem of the teaching of patriotism 
becomes specifically a question of social education. The 
question arises as to precisely what the objects of the devo- 
tion we call loyalty to the group are, and what factors in 
group-consciousness need most to be emphasized or edu- 
cated as patriotism. Is it race or manners or the pure fact 
of propinquity or herd contact or all together that are the 
objects of social desire and the feeling of solidarity? 

Race has been emphasized as the prime interest in group 
loyalty, but there seems to be doubt about this. At least 
there are difficulties in isolating anything we can call love 
of race. We can never separate race from propinquity, for 
example, or from mores, or from the bonds due to common 
possession of causes. Race loyalty appears to be a primi- 
tive feeling. When races were pure, groups small and pos- 
session common, all the elements of loyalty to group were 
present at once and coextensive. As civilization progressed 
the bond of pure race lessened. All races have now become 
mixed, we are told, and kinship in a group has ceased to be 
a fact. Nicolai maintains that race patriotism has grown 
out of family instinct, as something quite separate from 
herd instinct, but it seems likely that common interests, or- 
ganization under necessity, or the social attraction resulting 
from any common cause must have been stronger than any 
consciousness of kinship, or any herd instinct as such — 
which may indeed not have existed at all. 

It is this more conscious bond of function and propinquity 

226 



The Teaching of Patriotism 227 

at least that must be taken into account in the education of 
patriotism — certainly American patriotism. We in Amer- 
ica can hardly emphasize race patriotism, without producing 
internal disruption. It is common function that is the dis- 
tinguishing mark of the individuals of a group, rather than 
common origin. Common function, especially subsump- 
tion under one ordered government, particularly if the pur- 
pose be that of securing common protection, can plainly 
overcome all loyalty to race. Common religion antagonizes 
race consciousness, and we see therefore within nations races 
splitting up along lines of religious difference. We see 
within races also greater antagonism and greater lack of 
common interest between classes than between the same 
classes as found in different races. Aristocrats everywhere, 
for example, appear to have greater mutual sympathy and 
sense of nearness than do the upper and lower classes of the 
same race. 

One of our own urgent educational problems is that of 
overcoming race differences and of utilizing racial bonds 
for practical ends. We try to put loyalty to group first, 
and we assume that race patriotism can be supreme only 
among those who have no country worth being loyal to. 
Loyalty to race, however, has a pedagogical use. We see 
it being employed to extend social feeling beyond the point 
to which propinquity and common cause can carry it. It 
was used, we know, in the propaganda and educational cam- 
paign by which German statesmen and historians hoped to 
develop a wider German consciousness. The racial object 
in this case is apparently purely fictitious. We see the same 
concept being used now to create or expand social feeling 
throughout the Anglo-Saxon race. What we mean mainly 
by Anglo-Saxon race is really English speaking peoples, 
having common or similar mores and ideals. It is, of 
course, by emphasizing and participating in common func- 
tions that loyalty either to an Anglo-Saxon union or to the 
total group in our own nation will be developed. Our own 



228 The Psychology of Nations 

type of patriotism, in which there can be little or no racial 
loyalty as such, must be built upon more ideal and abstract 
conceptions than that of race. It is loyalty to group having 
a common idea, we say, which must be the basis of American 
group loyalty. This we must regard as higher than any 
race patriotism. All nations are now, as Boutroux re- 
marks, to a greater or less extent psychological races. The 
factors that have produced them are the factors that have 
caused men to become functioning units. 

This gives us a clew at least to a practical principle for 
the education of social loyalty. We must secure partici- 
pation on the part of the individual in every function that 
belongs to each group to which the individual himself is 
attached. Thus all degrees and kinds of loyalty may be 
made to exist in the same mind without conflict or confu- 
sion, precisely because the loyalty desired is loyalty to people 
as groups or organizations having causes, not to collections 
of individuals as such. 

The teaching of loyalty to any cause appears to be a lesson 
in patriotism. So far as teaching of patriotism is centered 
directly upon the production of loyalty to the whole group 
which constitutes the nation, the first object must be to 
create a sense of reality of the group in the mind of the 
individual. We may expect to do this in part by the teach- 
ing of geography and history in an adequate way, but we 
must also instill such patriotism by inducing individuals to 
participate in nation-wide organizations, which are capable 
of realizing dramatic effects. The experiences of the war 
have taught us to see this. It is organization or cooper- 
ation for practical ends, under conditions in which deep 
feeling is aroused, that most quickly and effectually creates 
the sense of solidarity in great groups of individuals. We 
must study the psychological side of this matter, and see 
how the power and momentum that are so readily gained 
in time of need can be better controlled for all the routine 
purposes of education and the practical daily life. The or- 



The Teaching of Patriotism 229 

ganization of national activities by means of voluntary asso- 
ciations will be likely to be one of the main educational 
methods of the future. If we are far-seeing we shall try to 
utilize the powers of organization, cooperation and com- 
munication to overcome many antagonisms now existing in 
society. War temporarily suspends class distinctions and 
many other forms of social dualism. The reaction after 
the war may be in the direction of increasing all the former 
antagonisms. To attain a strong morale and unity in times 
less dramatic than those of war is an educational problem, 
in a wide sense, but it is also a problem of the practical 
organization of all the social life. 

All nation-wide affiliations of children which in any way 
cross-section classes or antagonistic interests of any kind 
tend to create materials out of which patriotic sentiment is 
made. The school itself has tended to produce social unity, 
but it has also tended to level downward, and also to medi- 
ate associations which do not touch upon the activities and 
interests and differences of society. Our schools are demo- 
cratic by default of social interest in them, so to speak. 
We need organizations that shall level upward and to a 
greater extent involve the home. Then we shall see how 
democratic and how unified our social life really is. These 
organizations must be both democratic and practical. They 
must engage the interests of all classes. We know little as 
yet about the potential power, both for practical accomplish- 
ment and for the building of a higher type of loyalty and 
patriotism, there may be in wide organization. Here we 
can best combine the initiative and spirit that usually come 
from the upper classes with the great powers of achieving 
aggregate results inherent in the people as a whole. If we 
are to have a nation which shall be a unit, the people as a 
whole must have practical interests that require daily exer- 
tion and attention. They must be not merely united in 
spirit as a people, but united in common tasks that are defi- 
nite and real. Devotion to the functions of the people is 



230 The Psychology of Nations 

loyalty to the nation. This we should say is but an elabora- 
tion of the old colonial spirit of cooperation, when merely 
living in a community meant a certain daily service to all 
the community. We must continue to do now more con- 
sciously and with more technique, so to speak, what was 
once done more spontaneously and in a more primitive way. 
It is thus that the idea of neighbor might extend throughout 
the country as a whole. All the materials are at hand for 
an unlimited development of the practical life. The sense 
of solidarity and the comradeship and helpfulness that grow 
naturally in a small community, where conditions are hard 
and dangers imminent, we must still maintain in a great 
nation by organisation. This is at heart an educational 
problem. It is a work of national character building. It is 
training in patriotism. 

In this, as in all other phases of education now, we must 
consider how the great energies hidden in the aesthetic ex- 
periences can be put to use. The aesthetic, especially in its 
dramatic form, is a power to be reckoned with. Interest, 
organization, moral obligation do not control or release all 
the energies contained in the social life. We need the high 
moods of dramatic situations to reach the most fundamen- 
tal motives. The teacher must not only present ideas; he 
must generate power. And this is true of all efforts to 
employ for any end the interests of the people, old or young. 
The social life, if it is to be effective, must constantly be 
brought under the influence of dramatic stimuli. Dillon, a 
political writer, earnestly pleads for an extension and deep- 
ening of the sympathies of children, and says that patriotic 
sentiment must be engrafted upon the sensitive soul of the 
child. No one could refuse to admit this. The question, 
however, is of ways and means. In our view it is mainly 
through play, or better, art, that the soul of the child is thus 
made sensitive. A dramatic social life must be the main 
condition upon which we depend for thus extending and 
deepening the sympathies of the child. 



The Teaching of Patriotism 231 

Among these dramatic social effects we seek, the use of 
national holidays, all methods of symbolizing events, causes, 
or functions which are nationally significant are of course 
not to be ignored, but after all it is through practical activity 
made social and raised to dramatic expression or feeling, 
either by its own inherent idea and suggestive power, or by 
the addition of aesthetic elements, that loyalty to the greater 
group and its functions will best be educated. It is pre- 
cisely the lack of these dramatic elements and these mass 
effects in the social life that now leaves the social sense in 
its national aspects weak, and allows the various dividing 
lines throughout society to make even the most necessary 
activities to a greater or less degree ineffectual. 

The educational problem itself is plain. Unity of public 
interests, which can apparently now be obtained only under 
threat to national existence, must be maintained, not arti- 
ficially, but voluntarily. We want the morale of war and 
the social solidarity of war in the times and activities of 
peace — in those activities that represent service to country 
and also those which consist of the service of country in the 
performance of its broader functions as a member of a 
family or society of nations. 

A fourth factor in patriotism we recognize as loyalty 
to government, to state, or to leader. The place of such 
loyalty in a truly democratic country as contrasted with an 
autocratically governed country seems plain. It is not only 
sovereignty but statesmanship as well that must reside in 
the people. The people must not only have the power but 
the wisdom to rule. Even the ideals of the country must 
come out of the common life, or there at least be abundantly 
nourished. The German writers protest that the purely 
native ideals of the people do not represent the meaning 
and purpose of the State. The natural feelings of the peo- 
ple lack purpose and definiteness. The State is something 
very different from the sum of the people and the repre- 
sentation of their will. The native sense of solidarity is not 



232 The Psychology of Nations 

at all like the organization that comes through the State. 
But this abstract conception of the State as a being different 
from the people is precisely, in the view of such writers as 
Dickinson, the cause of wars. Upon this point Dickinson 
sees now a wide parting of the ways. We must have 
either one kind of world or the other. We must continue 
our warlike habits, and make the God-state the object of our 
religion, or abandon all this for a thorough-going democ- 
racy. It is the special interest that is assumed to inhere 
in the God-state that is the menace to peace everywhere. 
The abstract theory of State inspires far-seeing policies, 
democracy lives more by its natural instincts and feelings. 
The theory of necessary expansion, the right to grow and 
to intrude, is a natural deduction from the conception of 
the God-state; loyalty to the State demands ever increasing 
lands and population in order to have more military power. 
The democracy, of course, can harbor no such conception 
of State. Loyalty, in the democracy, must be to state and 
to statesmen rather as leaders of the people. The first and 
most necessary factor in patriotism as loyalty to authority 
is that authority must represent interests of country and 
people and must for that reason deserve loyalty. Educa- 
tionally, the problem is quite the reverse of the educational 
problem of the autocracy. The people are not to be trained 
in obedience and subservience to the state, but we have 
mainly to create in the minds of all people the capacity to 
recognize true leaders. It is not loyalty to authority as 
such, we say, that is wanted, but loyalty to leader who has 
no power at all except the power of the good and its force- 
ful presentation. A democracy is a society in which the 
aristocrats rule by persuasion, although we must think of 
this aristocracy as an aristocracy of intellect and morality 
rather than of birth and wealth. The ideal, we suppose, 
toward which our definition of democracy leads is a state 
in which authority as represented in the institutions of gov- 
ernment, and leadership represented in natural superiority 



The Teaching of Patriotism 233 

coincide. It is a State in which the good and the great 
shall govern. But in general, parliaments cannot now be 
the sources of moral and intellectual leadership of the peo- 
ple. They are subjected to too many conflicting interests. 
The time may come, we say, when authority and superiority 
will coincide, when laws will be made and executed by those 
who ought to do these things rather than by those who 
merely have the power to gain opportunity to do so. At 
any time and place we may, of course, behold great leader- 
ship combined with great authority. A true democracy is 
a state in which such coincidence will be inevitable. 

The minds of men are now full of these themes. They 
ask how nations may become unified without injustice and 
autocracy. Trotter says that national unity is what is 
wanted most of all things now in England. England must 
become conscious of itself, he says, and infuse into public 
affairs a spirit that will carry leaders far beyond their own 
personal interests. England has survived until now in 
spite of a strong handicap of discord. He speaks of the 
imperfect morale of England, shown in the war, which arose 
from the preceding social discord, and shows that the only 
perfect morale is that which is based upon social unity in 
the nation. All this is true also of ourselves. We also 
have our problem of creating loyalty to government and a 
national unity upon which a perfect morale both for peace 
and for war may be assured, by inspiring an ideal of honor, 
honesty, and efficiency in all public service, and also by 
arousing an intense interest in public service and deep ap- 
preciation of what public service and leadership mean, on 
the part of all the people. This is plainly not merely a 
work of cleaning politics. It is a work of public education. 
The attitude of a people toward authority and leadership is 
something more than a susceptibility to leadership and in- 
fluence. There is a desire for the experience of ecstatic 
social moods, the craving to be active and to be led. We 
make a great mistake if we think all that democracy means 



234 The Psychology of Nations 

is an instinct of individual independence, a desire to take 
part in the government as an individual. It is also a social 
craving that is involved. The presence of the great leader, 
even in times of peace, stimulates social feeling, and raises 
it to a productive level. This social feeling, we say, is not 
a mere reaction. It is the expression of a desire and readi- 
ness on the part of the people to participate in social activi- 
ties, and to attach themselves to worthy leaders, or to those 
now who appeal to the most dominant selective faculties. 

It is precisely at this point that the educational problem 
comes into view. We are likely to think of the public edu- 
cation required in a democracy as too exclusively political 
education, education that will enable the individual to assert 
himself — to know, to criticize, to vote, to take an active 
part in politics. This spirit is especially prominent in Eng- 
lish life. It is all very good in itself and necessary. But 
we need to educate ourselves also so that we may have a 
capacity to be led, in the right direction. To increase sensi- 
tiveness to leadership, but also to make that sensitiveness 
selective of true values, is one of the great educational prob- 
lems of a democracy. 

It seems to be a part of the work of education to create 
popular heroes, to do upon a higher level what the public 
press does in its own way, but mainly partisanly and too 
often from wholly unworthy motives — make reputations. 
We must do more in the teaching of history and biography 
than to glorify the lives of dead heroes. We need to be 
quite as much concerned about coming heroes. We must 
excite the imagination of the young and prejudice the public 
mind through educational channels, in favor of sincere and 
true leaders. The opportunity of the story teller is large, 
in this work, and we need also to. develop to a very high 
degree of excellence the educational newspaper. One of 
our great needs in education in this country is a daily news- 
paper for all schools — one that shall be both informing 
and influential, appealing by every art to the selective facul- 



The Teaching of Patriotism 235 

ties, governed absolutely by ethical, or at least not by politi- 
cal and partisan motives. The power of such a press might 
be very great indeed. As an unifying influence and a ready 
means of communication, and an instrument of use in the 
organization of all children, the function of this press would 
be a highly important one. 

All means of creating political ideals from within, of 
forging the links between leader and people in the plastic 
minds of children and youths, will be an education in one of 
the fundamental elements of patriotism. Such an educa- 
tion would be very different, however, from the state 
planned and authorized education that has been carried on 
under autocratic regimes. The difference is one of spirit 
and result, rather than of method. In one case the State 
becomes a kind of Nirvana, in the thought of which per- 
sonality and individuality are negated. Patriotism pro- 
duced in the minds of the young under the influence of a 
democratic spirit tends to become a creative force rather 
than a blind devotion to an accepted order. Institutions are 
made and advanced rather than merely obeyed and defended 
in this educational process. The widest scope and the 
freest opportunity are allowed for superior qualities of 
leaders and for right principles to have an effect upon so- 
ciety (and the result we invite indeed is a profound hero 
worship on the part of the young), but the conditions would 
be such that no other kind of authority would be able to 
exert a wide influence. To secure these conditions is, of 
course, one of the chief tasks of all the administrative 
branches of our educational service. 

The final factor of patriotism, according to our analysis, 
is loyalty to country as an historical object. The ideas and 
the feelings centering about the conception of country as 
personal, as living, as having rights and experience, duties 
and individuality are likely to be vivid and intense. They 
are the inspirers of supreme devotion to country, and also 
at times, of morbid national pride and fanatical country- 



236 The Psychology of Nations 

worship. The education of this idea of country we should 
suppose would be one of the fundamental problems of the 
development of patriotism. Presumably we are not to try 
to destroy this idea of country that all people seem to have, 
or to show it as one of the illusions of personification. 
Country is, of course, different from the mere sum of the 
people. It has continuity and it performs functions and 
it is an historic entity. Modernize and reform this idea, we 
must, but we cannot do away with it as something archaic 
and superstitious. Country is real, the concepts of honor 
and right belong to it, and country is something to which 
the mind must do homage. 

Boutroux says that a nation is a person, and has a right 
to live and to have its personality recognized as its own. 
Granting this to be true, and that we must think of country 
as personal and active, the question arises whether this con- 
cept of country is something that requires in any definite 
way educational interference. We should say that if coun- 
tries are essentially living historic entities having as such 
a high degree of reality, this reality-sense will be an im- 
portant element in the practical life of peoples. There can 
be no thought in our historical era of breaking up these 
entities we call nations. It is a day of intensified rather 
than of diminished nationalism. The sense of reality of 
nations must, we might think, be made more intense; pride 
of country must remain; we may find some place even for 
the jdea of the divine nature of country, which is an ele- 
ment in the patriotic spirit everywhere. That this concep- 
tion of country is a very necessary element in the morale 
of a country in war seems clear; that the morale of peace 
must be founded upon the same personal and religious senti- 
ments we can hardly doubt. 

Ambition for country is a normal result of the acceptance 
of the idea of country as personal, and ambition for country 
appears to be the very essence of any patriotic sentiment 
that is sincere. Still ambition for country has been, in some 



The Teaching of Patriotism 237 

of its forms, a cause of wars. What other conclusion can 
we come to, then, than that ambition for country 
must be subjected to radical educational influences? This 
is the reverse side of political progress. Ambition must 
be given new content and new direction. All the power 
and the sentiment of the old imperialistic motive must re- 
main, but all peoples must now be educated to see that the 
maintenance of its position in the world on the part of any 
nation is now a far more difficult and far more complex 
task than ever before. The building of empire must be 
shown to have been far easier and far less heroic, and much 
less a test of the superiority of a nation than we have sup- 
posed. We can show that military virtues are much more 
nearly universal than has often been assumed, and that 
nations that are inherently superior must abandon volun- 
tarily their ambitions of aggression, if they wish to remain 
superior and to have a place of honor in the world. 

This implies no teaching of pure internationalism. We 
still recognize as fundamental the whole spirit of national- 
ism. Country must remain first after all. All must indeed 
learn to take in some way the statesman's point of view in 
regard to country — with its sense of the future, of wide 
relations and long periods of time, and its practical vision. 
It is futile to think of this future as one wholly without 
struggle and competition. We must teach history also far 
more with the forward view. History has dealt too ex- 
clusively even in America with the past. National ambi- 
tion that has as its aim to realize, with independence and 
power, all the good that an enlightened nation contains, but 
at the same time to act with justice and with the thought of 
the nation as a part of a coordinated world must take this 
point of view. 

It is a median course between merely naive and day by 
day living, such as Lehmann (15) complains about as the 
natural tendency of uneducated patriotism, and the kind of 
program making that takes into account only the purposes 



238 The Psychology of Nations 

of a single nation that we must follow in teaching this for- 
ward view of national history. There is a danger in either 
extreme. We may remain a nature people, without a true 
historic sense, and be conscious only of a dramatic past 
which appeals to sentiment and a still more ambiguously 
glorious future ; or, on the other hand we may become too 
definitely ambitious and too conscious of some special mis- 
sion in the world. A nation with a program, a nation that 
does not recognize the experimental nature of history, is a 
dangerous element in the society of nations, even though its 
ambitions be not purely selfish. Excessive rationalism in 
national consciousness is itself a menace. We must live by 
our historic sense, by some ideal of a future for our nation; 
the people must have some vision of a glorious future, and 
not be expected to see only an unending vista of problems 
and labors, but this history must be understood and taught 
intimately and appreciatively and not merely objectively and 
logically. We must take an interest in the careers of all na- 
tions, and understand history psychologically and be willing 
to judge it ethically. So far we have had the opposite 
view in most of our teaching and writing of history. We 
must take a fair and tolerant view of the power motive that 
exists in all nations, and try to understand what it means to 
be of another nationality and to have ambitions like our 
own. Without such an attitude, we should argue, no one 
can be truly patriotic, if patriotism means having at heart 
the true interests of one's own country. 

It is not only possible and fair, therefore, but necessary 
that patriotism be enlightened. It is possible to be devoted 
each one first of all to his own country, to have few illusions 
about its values, and at the same time to have tolerance for 
all other nations. What other spirit is there, in fact, in 
which our history can now be taught? It seems absurd to 
say that such a spirit is weak. It implies consciousness of 
strength, of being able to hold one's own in a fair field, to 
have the dignity and sense of maturity that come from con- 



The Teaching of Patriotism 239 

tact with a real world. With such a spirit it would not be 
necessary to accept as inevitable the brutality of all national 
development, to use the words of Mach, a recent writer. 
We need no longer believe that war is the only thing that 
can prevent national disintegration, as many maintain. Na- 
tional consciousness certainly makes progress even without 
such dramatic and tragic events as have recently taken 
place. Boutroux says that in France, after the Dreyfus 
affair, although strong nationalistic feeling was stirred, 
there was also a new vision of the destiny of the French 
people as not only defenders of their own country but as 
champions of the rights of all nationalities. German writ- 
ers have not failed to notice this, and have been inclined 
to regard this spirit of France as a sign of degeneration 
and decay of the national life. We see now that generosity 
and justice are far from being evidences of weakness, and 
also that in the larger logic of history these weaknesses 
generate strength; at least they bring powerful friends in 
time of need. 

Once Germany herself was affected by such ideals of 
history. In the time of Goethe, Cramb reminds us, man- 
kind, culture and humanity were the great words. But 
upon this love of humanity and culture and love of the 
homeland a political spirit was engrafted, and this new spirit 
of Germany has manifestly now led to her downfall. No! 
there is no threat to national existence and no disloyalty 
to country in the form of internationalism that now is be- 
fore us. As social consciousness widens and social rela- 
tions become more intricate and more practical, national 
lines are not lost, but indeed become clearer. These na- 
tional boundaries are not temporary or artificial or imag- 
inary lines, for they represent and define activities and inter- 
ests that engage the most fundamental and the most per- 
sistent of human motives. 

It is in this spirit that loyalty to country as historic 
object should, we believe, be taught. This idea we teach 



240 The Psychology of Nations 

of course through history, in part, but history alone in any 
ordinary sense, as we might think of it as a subject in the 
curriculum of a school, is not enough. These ideas must 
be made persuasive and dynamic. For this as we see over 
and over again, art is the true method. The object to be 
presented and which must inspire devotion is an ideal object. 
It is complex and it performs practical functions, but it is 
through and through such an object as appeals most deeply 
to the aesthetic feelings. The image of this object must 
be made impressive. Since the ideal of our country is more 
abstract than that of most countries, as an object still less 
vivid and less personal, since it lacks some of the means of 
appeal to the feelings that imperialistic countries have, there 
is all the more need of art to make the figure of ideal coun- 
try stand out sharply before us. As we pass beyond the 
patriotism which is only a love of home, or a devotion to 
a political unit, to a patriotism that is a loyalty to a more 
abstract and more intangible idea, the art by which the 
idea of country is conveyed would, we should suppose, also 
become more abstract. Hocking says that it is through 
symbols that the mind best gropes its way to the realization 
of ideas. Feeling and imagery, we know, are very sus- 
ceptible to the influences of the symbol, and also to the 
phrase which is a lower order of symbol. Dramatic repre- 
sentation, all pageantry, pictorial art, music, even the art 
of the poster artist and the cartoonist have a place in the 
work of portraying country as an ideal object, and inspiring 
devotion to it and its causes. A far-seeking educational 
policy will scorn none of these in its effort to crystallize the 
concept of country and give it power and reality. 

Finally this idea of country must be put to work in every 
mind and in every life. Otherwise all education of patriot- 
ism will tend toward inevitable jingoism, and arouse all the 
violent and introverted feelings that have made history a 
long story of wars without end. This idea of country has 
been too aristocratic. It must now become accustomed to 



The Teaching of Patriotism 241 

a life of daily toil, and not merely expend itself in enthusi- 
asm and in self-sacrifice in crises such as war. Country as 
an idol of the aristocratic patriotism has always been too far 
removed from practical affairs. This patriotism has been 
too personal and too exclusive. Glory, honor and fame 
have played too large a part in it. On the other hand, the 
common idea of country needs to be made more vivid and 
more glorious. This spirit is accustomed to toil but not to 
have enthusiasm. It certainly needs more of art in its pa- 
triotism as well as in its daily life. We all need his- 
torical perspective. We must have through education what 
tradition has failed to give us. It is just by lacking the 
patriotism that a vivid sense of country as historic personage 
gives, by lacking imagination and the ability to detach 
themselves from the reality and the surroundings of the 
daily life that the working classes are so likely to be af- 
fected by influences that tend to break down all patriotism. 
We shall have a true patriotism, we should say, only when 
country is an idea that is worked for by all classes ; when it 
is an idea that is woven into the daily lives of the people; 
when it makes the daily toil lighter and touches it with 
glory, and when it enters into all the enthusiasm of the more 
favored classes and inspires it with the spirit of daily 
service. 



CHAPTER VII 

POLITICAL EDUCATION IN A DEMOCRACY 

One of the results of the war has been to raise in the 
minds of all peoples, to an extraordinary degree, the most 
earnest questions about the nature and validity of govern- 
ment. The political sense of all peoples has been stimulated. 
We see on every hand new conceptions of government and 
demands for more and better government, but also the most 
radical criticism and the denial of all government. The 
determination in very fundamental ways of what govern- 
ment is, and must be, what ideas must prevail, what must 
be suppressed, what an ideal government is, if such an 
ideal can be formed, the question of evils inherent in the 
idea of government itself (if such evils there be), the laws 
of development of government in all their practical aspects 
— all these questions now come up for examination, and 
will not be repressed. If we do not take them at one 
level we must upon another. Naively or scientifically, 
philosophically or radically, the nature of government must 
be dealt with. 

Government is now being examined, we all see, from 
points of view not hitherto taken. The conscientious ob- 
jector raises the question of the ultimate basis of the right 
of the many to control the lives of individuals, and he asks 
especially whether there is any ground for the assumption 
that in this sphere, more than in any other, might makes 
right. Conscription, in fact, has driven us to consider the 
meaning of liberty and the foundations upon which the 
right to it rests. This stern fact of conscription, the real- 

242 



Political Education in a Democracy 243 

ization that in a moment the most democratic governments 
in the world are capable of bringing to bear, quite consti- 
tutionally, absolute control over the most basic possessions 
of the individual, has led many to ask seriously whether 
government is after all a good in itself, or is merely a neces- 
sity having many attendant evils. They wish to know 
whether there is in the principle of government something 
that takes precedence over all the assumed rights of the in- 
dividual. Does government, they inquire, have a right to 
the individual ; or is it only in serving the individual that it 
is entitled to exercise authority that limits the individual ? 

These are questions, manifestly, that involve the whole 
foundation of sociology, but we need not be unduly dis- 
mayed at that. This is a time when naive thinking and 
exact science must make compromises with one another. 
For better or for worse we must find some working hypo- 
thesis upon which a fair adjustment may be made in the 
practical life of the present" moment. This working hy- 
pothesis must also serve — and perhaps that is after all its 
main function — as something to guide us, something hav- 
ing solidity upon which we can stand, in performing our 
work as educators. 

What we need, what we believe all feel now the need 
of, is a conception of government satisfying to the multi- 
tude of common people. We wish to know whether we live 
for the state, we say, or whether the state lives for us. 
We wish to understand what the basic rights and duties of 
the individual are. As average individuals, willing to give 
service in any cause that seems good, we do not ask so 
much to have determined for us precisely what type of 
government best satisfies the requirements of science or 
philosophy, but what the best working basis for harmonious 
adjustment in the social life of the future is to be. These 
enquiring moods on the part of the people are a part of the 
temperament that has issued from the war. We shall make 
a mistake if we regard it as a mere passing effect, however; 



244 The Psychology of Nations 

it means a deep stirring of the political consciousness of 
people throughout the world. 

Significant differences may be observed in the general at- 
titude toward government among the people in the great 
nations of the world. Each nation appears to have its own 
political temperament, and this quite apart from the views 
represented especially by political parties and the like, 
and quite independently of the scientific and philosophical 
conceptions of government and its functions of which there 
are a great number, and among them certainly no agreement 
upon the main issues and values. 

Taking public opinion as a whole, Germany, England, 
France and America seem to represent distinctly different 
attitudes toward government. The State in the German 
philosophy of life, as every one is now aware, is all; the 
individual derives his reality and his value, so to speak, 
from the idea of the supreme state. Individuality and 
freedom in this philosophy of life do not refer to political 
individuality and freedom at all. In England, and per- 
haps to some extent in all democratic countries, the pre- 
vailing thought seems to be that the government that gov- 
erns the least is, on the whole, the best government. The 
English government is supposed to be the servant of the 
people, and the individual has been in the habit of looking to 
the government for many services. The individual, free 
and self-determined, is the unit of value and of society, and 
the regulation of his conduct by government is at best a 
necessary evil. It came as a surprise to the Englishman 
when he realized that the state could command the most per- 
sonal service and the most complete surrender of the prop- 
erty rights of the individual. 

Le Bon says that the Frenchman, too, thinks of the 
state as something to be kept at a minimum and to a 
certain extent to be opposed. Opposition to the govern- 
ment is a part of the Frenchman's plan of life. Boutroux 
says the same — that in France the habit of thinking of 



Political Education in a Democracy 245 

the government and of society as two rivals has not been 
overcome. 

Our own idea of government is certainly somewhat 
different from these. We are watchful of individual right, 
but we do not tend to think of government either as op- 
ponent or as servant. We do not ask the government to 
take care of us as individuals, and we do not feel in the 
public attitude the resistance to government that the French 
writers observe in France. The American expects on the 
whole to look out for his own interests and he has never 
felt the pressure and over-powering force of government 
— until perhaps now. Mabie says that the American has 
conceived of his government as existing to keep the house 
in order while the family lived its life freely, every in- 
dividual following the bent of his own genius. 

These temperamental attitudes toward government, we 
said, seem quite apart from scientific and philosophic con- 
ceptions of state. We see, however, something of the 
temperament reflected in the philosophies. Philosophers do 
not wholly detach themselves from the mores of their race. 
The monarchy of Germany, Munsterberg says, appeals to 
the moral personality and the (Esthetic imagination. Its 
main function, however, is to safeguard the German people. 
Its faults are the faults of its virtues. Other German 
writers praise the German government especially for its 
efficiency, for its incomparable body of officials — indeed 
for its very clock-work perfection that Bergson hates in 
Prussian life. Lehmann goes so far as to say that the 
German state had reached the perfect balance between in- 
dividualism and communism. These writers see plenty of 
self-realization in German society, and quite enough of 
participation, on the part of the individual, in the govern- 
ment. Schmoller (51) denies that Germany ever lacked the 
spirit of free institutions, and even compares Germany with 
ancient Attica, which he thinks was great not because of 
the rule of the demos, but because the people followed their 



246 The Psychology of Nations 

aristocratic leaders. Troeltsch tries to show that the Ger- 
man idea of freedom is different from, and indeed superior 
to, that of all other peoples. The French, he says, rest 
their idea of freedom upon the doctrine of the equality 
of all citizens, but in reality lawyers and plutocrats prevail. 
The English idea of freedom comes from Puritanic ideas; 
the individual's independence of the state is based upon 
the idea of natural rights, and upon the theory of the 
creation of the state by the individual. But German free- 
dom is something entirely different. Here freedom is in 
education, and in the spiritual content of individuality. 
German freedom is the freedom that comes from the spon- 
taneous recognition of rights and duties. Parliaments are 
good in their place, but after all they are not the essence 
of freedom. 

Totally different conceptions of state are easily found. 
Consider, for example, the views of Russell. Through 
every page of his book there shines the determined belief 
in the inalienable rights of the individual. Self-expres- 
sion of the individual through creative activity is the basic 
value, or at least the fundamental means of realizing values. 
Russell sees nothing sacred or final in any form of exist- 
ing government. He would like to see government ex- 
panded in some directions and contracted in others, for 
the functions of government cannot all be vested in one 
body or organization. For defense the nation is not large 
enough. For all civic government the nation is too large. 
In its internal control it treats the individual too ruth- 
lessly. Wasteful and in large part even unnecessary, it 
antagonizes the free development of the individual. Gov- 
ernment should cease its oppression, it should no longer 
support unnatural property rights, or interfere with the 
personal affairs of individuals. At the present time, how- 
ever, we should not expect a radical cure for all the evils 
of government. If only we can find the right direction in 



Political Education in a Democracy 247 

which to make advance, we should be satisfied with some- 
thing less perfect than an ideal. 

The state in Russell's view, instead of being an ideal 
institution, is even harmful in many ways and terribly de- 
structive. It promotes war. It makes the individual help- 
less, and crushes him with a sense of his unimportance. 
It abets the injustice of capitalism. It excludes citizens 
from any participation in foreign affairs. We must indeed 
not let this incubus of state overwhelm us. We must keep 
it in its proper place, even in performing its necessary 
functions, such as preserving public health. It is better 
to take some risk, even in such matters, than to override 
too much the individual's personal rights. All the functions 
of the state must be made to center more about the welfare 
of the individual, and in doing this the state must plainly 
regard as fundamental the right of the individual to free 
growth and the development of all his powers. We must 
learn to think more in terms of individual welfare and less 
in terms of national pride. 

In syndicalism in some form Russell sees the most prom- 
ise for reform of government. Some type of govern- 
ment at least which does not make the geographical unit the 
basis of everything must be the government of the future. 
This would lead in the end to a higher state than that based 
primarily upon law, for it would be a government in which 
free organization would be the first principle. 

Plainly we are to-day in a time of flux in which ideas and 
institutions are unsettled, and there is a great variety of 
political theories of all kinds. We can hope to find no 
agreement among theorists and certainly no common ground 
for the reconciliation of conflicting parties. Still, even 
for the most practical daily life we must find some guiding 
principles. We must look for some means of bringing 
order out of the present diversity and conflict. Some 
valuation of government, some idea of the ultimate purpose 



248 The Psychology of Nations 

of government ought to be agreed upon, if for no other 
reason that we may have some principle which will give 
us continuity in our educational work. 

Consider the varieties of political creed now offered 
us, and there can be little doubt both of the difficulty and 
the necessity of finding guiding principles for the practical 
life and to preserve sanity of mind. The monarchical 
idea still lingers; there is a variety of conceptions of democ- 
racy, differing widely ; there are socialists — state social- 
ists, Marxian socialists of the old line, Bolshevists, re- 
gionalists, syndicalists, and others — and anarchists of pure 
blood. Of internal and party differences, policies, and 
plans there is no end. Through all these we have to thread 
our way, and reach what conclusions we can. 

No American can of course be expected to see the ques- 
tion of government otherwise than through American eyes. 
He is to some extent prejudiced and bound to the ideas of 
liberty, individualism, and democracy, whatever his variety 
of party politics be. Democracy he may regard as an as- 
sumption, but it will seem now even more than ever a neces- 
sary assumption upon which to build a working con- 
ception of government. 

We have to look somewhere in actual life for the ele- 
ments and principles of government. Why should we not 
look for them in American life, where government has 
grown up comparatively free from traditions and preju- 
dices and where it has been by all the ordinary tests suc- 
cessful? There has been something both ideal and generic 
in American life. Whatever personal equation may be in- 
volved in saying this, the point of view has some objective 
justification. It is a genetic method, at least. In early 
American life society was simple, and life was earnest, and 
we see government and the individual in their essential 
relations to one another. 

In this primitive and yet modern society we see the in- 
dividual as a collection of functions, so to speak, existing 



Political Education in a Democracy 249 

in a group. The individual also has various desires, which 
do not appear to be wholly in agreement with his social 
functions. Some of these desires of individuals are 
strongly antagonistic to society. In this society, govern- 
ment is plainly the means of protecting the individual or the 
group, by the suggestion or the exertion of lawful force, 
from the threat of lawless force. Law is a means of en- 
abling and also compelling the individual to perform the 
various functions which belong to him as an individual 
or as a member of the group. To some extent the law 
also aids the individual in performing his functions. But 
this simple social order already shows certain basic dis- 
harmonies. It is an experimental regulation of the individ- 
ual. Every restriction the individual helps to put upon 
other individuals by participating in or acquiescing in the 
establishment of government and law reacts to limit his 
own freedom, in ways which he cannot wholly predict. 
Freedom of the individual, even in the simplest social 
order, becomes greatly limited, if not necessarily, at least 
naturally — and indeed necessarily, since the only choice 
appears to be between lawful and lawless limitation of 
freedom. From the beginning, therefore, there can be no 
perfect satisfaction of individual desires or of either gen- 
eral or individual needs, in the ordered social life. So- 
ciety as a whole regulates the conduct of the individual both 
by aiding and by inhibiting his activities, and must do so. 
In doing this, it is plain, it promotes all or most of the func- 
tions of the individual. Ordered society widens the total 
sphere of action of the individual. The individual left to 
himself tends to become an end-in-himself. Law makes 
him to a greater extent a means. In doing this it serves 
him and it also uses him, and there can never be any 
guarantee, in any individual case, of what the sum of 
these services and restraints shall be. Society uses the 
individual in part, but not exclusively, in his own service. 
The good and the evil, the necessity and the dilemma of 



250 The Psychology of Nations 

all government are outgrowths of this primitive service 
of the social organization and this original disharmony 
among the wills of individuals and the will of the group 
to serve the individual and also at the same time certain 
general purposes which may not in any given case co- 
incide with either the desire or the need of the individual. 
For this reason we conclude that there can be no perfect 
government. All government is experimental and exists by 
compromise. 

What, then, in the most general way, can we say is the 
legitimate function or purpose of government? Hocking 
says that government is the means of assuring the individ- 
ual that his achievements will be permanent. To this end 
it puts order into the structure of society. In our view 
something similar, but not identical with this, is true. 
We can say that in its complex forms it is in principle 
only what we found it to be in its primitive or simple forms. 
Government is ideally a means of aiding all the functions 
of every individual. Functions, let us observe and not 
primarily desires are served. These functions are such 
functions as the individual has as a member of every 
group to which he naturally belongs. Government, then, 
so to speak, has no standing of its own. Its proper func- 
tion is to facilitate all other functions. Neither individ- 
uals nor governments have any rights as abstracted from 
the sum of functions which they essentially are. 

If this be true, we can certainly define no one best 
and eternal type of government, any more than a fixed 
and perfect plan of life for an individual can be defined. 
Government might be supposed properly to change ac- 
cording to the functions which from time to time were 
most important for the society in question. Social life, 
under government, differs from a free and unorganized so- 
cial life mainly in that a certain objectivity is acquired 
in regard to the functions of the individual. The individ- 
ual becomes a creature of functions rather than of de- 



Political Education in a Democracy 251 

sires and needs. Common interests, or the interests of 
the group are served, we say; in doing this the individual 
is made to serve his own interests, perhaps, but the most 
outstanding fact is that in this organized life the immediate 
desires of the individual are likely to be thwarted. Regu- 
larity is put into conduct, and conduct is made to serve 
multiple and distant ends. The functions of the individ- 
ual, left to the desire of the individual, will seldom be 
harmoniously performed. They will lack precisely ob- 
jective consideration. But in the organized social life 
there will also be no perfect order and harmony, no final 
balance of functions. Everything is still relative and ex- 
perimental. Government is a system in which any one 
individual at any moment may gain or may lose. But 
on the whole, under the good government, both more free- 
dom for the individual and better conditions and better 
life for the individual will presumably be obtained than 
in any possible disordered or unorganized society. But 
government will really add nothing that does not already 
belong to the functions that naturally develop in any social 
group. 

The actual functions of governments are, therefore, 
highly complex, because it is in some way involved in all the 
functions of the individuals themselves. Governments will 
be judged good or bad in two particulars : according to the 
completeness with which they include all the social func- 
tions, and as regards their efficiency in facilitating these 
functions. We must not make the mistake of judging a 
government merely by its form. Under the same constitu- 
tion and holding the same ideals, there is room for widely 
different forms of activity on the part of the government, 
and great differences in efficiency and in the functions 
performed. The same functions may be performed and 
the same degree of efficiency reached apparently with differ- 
ent organizations. Cleveland shows, for example, how our 
own government might become much more efficient and 



252 The Psychology of Nations 

make radical changes in the mechanism of the legislative and 
executive functions without sacrificing any principle we 
hold to, and perhaps without any change in our constitu- 
tion. 

It is this idea of the proper functions of government 
and the relative adequacy of existing governments to per- 
form them that seems to be deeply questioned. Life has 
suddenly grown more complex. The individual is brought 
face to face with new demands upon him. He becomes, it 
may be, a member of new groups, having new functions. 
Government also, and correspondingly, expands. The ques- 
tion is not now of the efficiency of government in doing 
what it has hitherto undertaken; we wish to feel sure 
that government is adequate to meet the requirements of 
a rapidly changing social order. That just now is in- 
deed a very vital question. Governments, we say, may 
be obliged to adapt themselves to entirely new tasks. So- 
ciety assumes new external relations, and therefore we 
should expect that new organs would be needed for per- 
forming these new functions. 

In all this we have been making objective valuations of 
government. An ideal or a definition of government in 
terms of its functions and the degree of efficiency in the 
performance of them might still, we ought to observe, 
leave a wide scope for preference in regard to forms, and 
other subjective valuations. Even between artistocratic and 
democratic forms, there may be still room for valid ap- 
preciations on aesthetic or moral grounds. Our objective 
valuations of government must in fact in various ways 
impinge upon fundamental questions in which no purely 
scientific considerations will be wholly decisive. 

We can certainly find no precise way of valuing in 
detail or in their totality existing or proposed forms of 
government. Our most valid method, however, appears 
to be to refer at every step the functions of government 
back to the functions of the individuals who make up so- 



Political Education in a Democracy 253 

ciety. Every phase of legitimate government must thus 
go back to the individual, and his desires and functions. 
If we do this we shall see again why in national life we 
have the same kind of experimental problem that we have 
in the life of the individual. There can be no perfect 
adjustment among the acts of an individual, and no final 
valuation of them. There is no perfect balance between 
present use and future good, between individual and so- 
cial values, between desires or needs and functions. The 
reason for this, we say, is that life is so complicated and 
made up of so many functions and of so many conflicting de- 
sires that it cannot be conducted according to any single 
principle or combination of principles. If we think of 
government as only a phase of the widest social living, 
and so as being through and through of the nature of the 
life of the individual, we ought to have the right point of 
view for all practical consideration of it. We must not ex- 
pect consistency or perfection in government, and we can 
have no hope of passing absolute and final judgments upon 
it. Radical politics, in our present situation, must be re- 
garded as one of our greatest dangers. 

Democracy has become the " great idea of the age." 
It is our own fundamental principle, so we of all people 
ought to be able to understand and to defend it — and to 
define it. Yet many writers complain and more imply that 
the idea of democracy has never been very clear, and per- 
haps not even very sincere. Sumner says that democracy is 
one of the many words of ambiguous meaning that have 
played such a large part in politics. Democracy, he says, is 
not used as a parallel word to aristocracy, theocracy, autoc- 
racy, and the like, but is invoked as a power from some 
outside origin which brings into human affairs a peculiar in- 
spiration and an energy of its own. 

Democracy has apparently meant quite different things 
to different people. To some it is essentially a form of gov- 
ernment in which control is represented as in the hands 



254 The Psychology of Nations 

of the majority of the people. Some seem to have no fur- 
ther interest in democracy, if only they see that the demo- 
cratic form in government is preserved and jealously 
guarded and the majority by its ballot rules. To some it 
is the aspect of democracy as individualism that has ap- 
pealed most — freedom of the individual even from the 
restraint of law and custom — or again equality of op- 
portunity. These perhaps think of freedom as a supreme 
value in itself. Some think of democracy more in terms 
of its internal conditions or its results. They think of 
freedom as a means of accomplishing good, not as merely 
being a good. They believe that the good of the individual 
is not necessarily represented by the satisfaction of his 
desires, and so perhaps think of the law and order of the 
democratic community, the control and regulation of the 
individual in his daily life by the will of all, as the es- 
sential feature of a democracy. 

Here in America, taking our history and our life as 
a whole, it seems certain that the dominating mood has 
been the love of individual freedom. Our democracy is 
founded upon the idea of the rights of the man. But these 
rights and privileges of the man can be secured only by so- 
cial organization that immediately takes away some of them. 
So our national life, just because of the strong individualism 
with which it began, also began with a firm principle of law 
and order modifying the idea of freedom. Some would 
say it began thus in a paradox or a delusion. Even to be 
morally free was not allowed. The group, in the Puritan 
society at least, exercised strict supervision over the moral 
life of the individual. Giddings says, in fact, that this 
experiment in moral control on the part of the people over 
all individuals is one of the chief characteristics of Amer- 
ican life. 

Our history is the story of an experiment in freedom, 
in which according to some we have more and more sup- 
pressed the individual. Grabo says that the history of 



Political Education in a Democracy 255 

democracy here is the story of a dream rather than an ac- 
complishment. Such views, however, do not appear to 
be true representations of the case. They assume that the 
independence of the individual is more real or more realiz- 
able than it can be in any society. Is it not rather true that 
our apparent relinquishment of the idea of freedom is the 
reverse side, so to speak, of the persistence throughout our 
history of an impossible ideal of independence of the in- 
dividual ? It is individualism, rather than control, that has 
increased. The original freedom was a freedom such as 
comes from the willing participation of the individual in an 
order in which the control was immediate and vested in the 
whole. Control has become more definite and precise as 
the individual has become further removed from the direct 
influence of the social environment. We have developed 
relatively too much our original idea of independence, and 
from time to time elements have been added to our national 
life that represent an ideal of radical individualism, as for 
example Jacksonian democracy. Willingness to participate 
freely in the functions of society, and desire on the part 
of the individual to perform all his functions, have been 
relatively too slight. Even in politics it is not so much 
by the desire to participate in government that we have 
shown our democratic spirit as by the desire not to be in- 
dividually governed. The old colonial spirit of coopera- 
tion and neighborliness with which we started has been 
(speaking relatively again) neglected. We have developed 
toward individualism and control rather than toward free 
association under leadership. We have lacked ability as 
individuals to see ourselves from the standpoint of the 
whole of society. Now, therefore, we are faced by the 
apparent still further decline of our principle of freedom, 
because we see that we may have efficiency only by increasing 
authority. 

The question may fairly be asked whether we are not 
at a parting of the ways, when our democratic idea must 



256 The Psychology of Nations 

be more clearly defined, and we must decide whether we 
shall change toward autocracy; or now, at the end of our 
stage of primitive democracy, enter upon a plane of higher 
democracy. Sumner says that always in a democracy it 
is a question what class shall rule, that the control in a 
democracy always tends to remain either in the hands of 
the upper class or the lower class, and that the great middle 
class, the seat of vast powers, is never organized to rule. 
Such conditions show, again, the effects of the individualism 
that prevails — national unity and the capacity for free 
organization without individual or special motives are 
wanting. 

Cramb has stated a fundamental truth, from our point of 
view, in saying that hitherto democracy has been more in- 
terested in its rights than in its duties. It is very true that 
the subjective state of freedom has been the real attraction 
and appeal in our social life. It has brought to our shores 
vast numbers of people who would otherwise never have 
crossed the seas. Perhaps it has brought us too many, and 
those with too keen a love of freedom. At any rate, the 
question is now whether as a people we shall be able to 
take a more advanced view of the individual, a more 
functional view, so to speak, a new and enlarged concep- 
tion of the meaning and place of the individual man in so- 
ciety. Democracy, in a word, must henceforth, certainly 
if it is to be a world state or order and not a condition of 
world-wide anarchy, go beyond the negative idea of free- 
dom, justice and equality, to a more positive idea of service, 
in which we think of individuals as having more complex, 
more free and more internal relations among themselves. 

In this idea of democracy, freedom is seen to mean first 
of all freedom to perform all the functions which belong 
to an individual as a part of a highly organized society. 
It does not include, however, freedom not to perform these 
functions. It is freedom to lead a normal life, in a word, 
not freedom to lead an abnormal life. Whether, in this 



Political Education in a Democracy 257 

democracy, the performance of these functions will be more 
or less under compulsion, whether the individual will vol- 
untarily surrender certain rights assumed to be inherent 
in the principle of freedom, or whether these rights will be 
taken away by the show of force on the part of authority, 
seems to depend now mainly upon two things : whether in 
this society superior leadership will have an opportunity 
and be strong enough to exert deep influence upon the 
people ; and whether, in general, such an educational pro- 
gram can be carried on as will make men susceptible to 
such leadership, capable of judging its values and able 
also to organize freely for the accomplishment of the pur- 
pose and functions of the social life. In such a democratic 
society as this, it is plain, the evils of individualism and 
also the evils of control will tend to disappear. Perfect 
identity of individual and social will we should not ex- 
pect to be attained anywhere. 

The evils of our present democratic society — the in- 
dividualism, party politics and class rule — appear in sharp 
relief when we compare existing institutions and the pres- 
ent spirit with what is required in a true democracy. The 
old idea that the will of the majority must prevail is seen 
to be inadequate, if we mean by will of the majority the 
average or the sum of the desires and opinions of the ma- 
jority. These do not necessarily represent the good, and 
indeed under existing conditions, they cannot. We want 
the will of the superior man to prevail, but to prevail not by 
force, but by the power of influence. The politicians talk 
about the soundness of the instincts of the people Some- 
thing more than instinct is wanted in a democracy. In- 
stincts are not progressive. Individualism, the pleasure 
of the moment, and mediocrity are represented too much by 
instincts and in every expression of the mere will of the 
majority. People in the mass are governed too much by 
impulse. Conduct and purpose are too discontinuous and 
fragmentary ; or perhaps we had better say that the stimuli 



258 The Psychology of Nations 

of the moment are too likely to control conduct. Whereas 
social life under the influence of the highest type of leader- 
ship is governed by more complex states of consciousness, 
by moods, which are more original and creative, and in 
which desires and impulses are no longer the controlling 
factors in conduct. 

This view of democracy shows that democracy is some- 
thing still to come. It is not an achieved social order or 
a well-founded doctrine that must merely be exploited and 
spread abroad over the world. Democracy is experimental 
civilization. We do not know whether it represents the 
ultimate good in government and society or not, and 
whether it is destined to continue and to prevail. That 
will depend, we suppose, upon what we make it. We 
have our evidences of history, but after all democracy is 
still based upon assumptions. It is an experimental order, 
we say, in which we try to realize many desires and to 
harmonize many functions. The final justification of 
democracy must be in the far future. It must be judged 
then by its fruits, rather than by rationally testing the 
validity of its principle. Thus far it is a working hy- 
pothesis. 

The precise form which government in a democracy ought 
to take is, from our present point of view, of secondary 
importance. Democracy is a spirit, an idea, a social qual- 
ity, first of all. A monarchial government, though it might 
be otherwise out of date, might be entirely democratic in 
spirit ; and republics, we know, may be anything but demo- 
cratic. Where control is in the hands of the people and 
not of a class, but of the people subject to the best leader- 
ship — a leadership that is based upon influence rather 
than upon any excess of authority or show of force, there 
is democracy, and of this, of course, the ballot itself is by 
no means the only test. But where thus far shall we find 
any democratic society that is so sound that it can offer 
itself as a model to the rest of the world? 



Political Education in a Democracy 259 

Most of the political questions of the day appear to 
be relative and conditioned questions. The question of 
governmental control of industry is an example. This 
seems to be a question of expediency, and to be conditional 
upon local needs and the status of particular governments. 
It is certainly no fundamental question of the social order. 
Those who make socialism a supreme and universal prin- 
ciple also appear to be too radical. Sellars says that so- 
cialism is a democratic movement, the purpose of which 
is to secure an economic organization of society that will 
give a maximum of justice, liberty and efficiency. Drake, 
in " Democracy Made Safe," says that socialism implies 
equality everywhere; more than that, it means social, politi- 
cal, economic and legal equality throughout the earth. One 
cannot but feel that these enthusiastic writers are making 
the mistake of undertaking to do by political mutation, so 
to speak, that which can be accomplished, we may suppose, 
only by a slow process of experimentation in government, 
and the still slower but more certain method of education, 
in which all people are trained in fundamental social rela- 
tions. Radical and venturesome change in so great and 
complex an organism as a great nation is now danger- 
ous, because only a part of the conditions can be taken 
into account, and the result, therefore, must be conjec- 
tural. 

Radical socialism that threatens to throw political power 
into the hands of a political class, or of any social or 
economic class, bolshevism which Dillon (speaking of Rus- 
sia especially) says is doomed to failure because of its 
sheer economic impossibility, any plan which tends to con- 
centrate authority in any class is threatening to our future. 
The democratic spirit must hold fast against the rising 
tide from the lower classes, just as it has been obliged 
to contend against autocracy. Democracy has on one side 
to assimilate aristocracy, and not overturn it. So it re- 
sists the rise of the proletariat, not to turn this force back, 



260 The Psychology of Nations 

even if this were possible, but to control it. It is precisely 
because of the deep movement of the people — the world 
revelation and the world revolution, as Weyl calls it — 
that we must make all political institutions flexible and ad- 
justible, and also throw into the balance all the powers 
of education and thus save democracy from itself. 

These dangers to democracy are not to be taken too 
lightly. Democracy indeed faces two dangers. Hobson 
in " Democracy After the War " has stated one of them. 
He says that the war will result in no easy victory for 
democracy, for the system of caste and bureaucracy is very 
likely to become fixed. Democracy therefore must be 
worked for, and to that end there must be a union of all 
types of reformers. We must play off the special inter- 
ests against one another, says Hobson, work for industrial 
democracy, educate the people. On the other hand there 
is that danger from the rising of the masses which Weyl 
heralds. This war underneath and after the war is as 
Weyl sees it, the war of the poor and exploited against 
all the exploiters. These elements are at heart antagonistic 
to government. Democracy, if all this be true, is neither 
well defined as an idea nor well established in the world. 
An unjust and privileged class above and an unwise and 
uneducated class beneath threaten it. But the case seems 
by no means hopeless. Indeed the remedies and the way 
of escape seem in a general way plain. Political changes 
on one side and political education on the other must be- 
come, we should suppose, the order of the day. 

Of the actual political changes impending and those 
that ought to be advocated this is not the place to speak, 
except to say that they must by their nature be tentative 
and experimental. The radical mind is to-day one of the 
most dangerous elements in society, just because all the 
world over men are very ready to be influenced and are 
eager for change and are uncritical. Cleveland in an essay 
entitled Can Democracy be Efficient? exhibits a type of 



Political Education in a Democracy 261 

thinking about political questions that ought to appeal to 
all practical thinkers. It is his method rather than, in this 
connection, his conclusions that one should notice. Cleve- 
land would study all countries with reference to the effi- 
ciency of their governments in fulfilling what seem to him 
to be the proper and essential functions of a government, 
working under our present conditions. Germany, France, 
England and America, he observes, have all adopted dif- 
ferent ways of conducting the work of government. These 
essentials of government he reduces to five : 1 ) Strong 
executive leadership; 2) a well disciplined line organiza- 
tion; 3) a highly specialized staff organization; 4) ade- 
quate facilities for inquiry, criticism, and publicity by a 
responsible personnel independent of the executive; 5) 
means of effective control in the hands of the people and 
their representatives. Of these principles, Germany used 
only the first three, England left out the second and the 
third, France used all (but was late in seeing the need), 
America has left out all of them. 

This is the type of thought, we suggest, that seems best 
adapted to meet present requirements for a practical theory 
of government. Analysis of the functions of government, 
critical examination of the needs of the present time, and 
a plan of modifying what already exists, rather than of 
making revolutionary changes, seem to be the right direc- 
tion of progress. 

If the source of power in the future is to be vested 
in the people, the education of the people with reference 
to their function as rulers will naturally be one of the most 
vital and permanent of the requirements of the social 
life. Dickinson says that the time has gone by for en- 
trusting the destinies of nations to the wisdom of experts. 
If this be true, and popular opinion is to supersede the 
wisdom of the experts, if the people are really to have 
power, and be competent critics of good government, or 
merely to become good material in the hands of construe- 



262 The Psychology of Nations 

tive statesmanship, education must include or be essentially 
political education. The people must be educated for 
democracy, but also made competent to create democ- 
racy. 

Of course everything we do in the school, the inten- 
tion of the school to represent what is best in civiliza- 
tion, and to be a center in which creative forces come to- 
gether has some reference to education for the democratic 
life, but there are also more definite and more specifically 
political things to be taught. And yet, if what we have 
said before has any truth in it, it seems certain that no 
educational policy at the present time can include the teach- 
ing of specific political doctrines, or try to prejudice the 
minds of children or the people to any political creed. We 
are in a position in regard to political teaching very similar 
to that in which we stand about religion : we must not 
teach creed, but we may and must teach natural religion. 
We cannot teach politics as such, but we must teach nat- 
ural democracy, or at least the fundamental social habits 
and functions. 

There are two essential educational problems of democ- 
racy that have especial reference to the political aspects 
of it. The first is to teach universally in as practical a man- 
ner as possible the materials out of which political wisdom 
may be derived. We maintain that the lack of political 
education and experience is one of the most serious defects 
of the German people. These people are at first submissive 
to an extraordinary degree and then they become danger- 
ously revolutionary. The lack of political competence is 
shown in both cases. We wish, of course, neither of these 
excesses in our own country. And yet we do have to 
cope at the present time with both a tendency to fanaticism, 
radicalism and intense partisanship, and with indifference 
and ignorance of the nature and purpose of our institu- 
tions and government. Both the indifference and the par- 
tisanship play into the hands of party politics, and no ad- 



Political Education in a Democracy 263 

vantages gained by the balance of parties in opposition to 
one another can compensate for the loss of energy and 
the encouragement of inefficient service the system fosters. 

To help offset these tendencies it must be possible to 
give to all youths, and of course we mean both sexes, 
through our educational system and otherwise an educa- 
tion in politics, and besides this some practical experience 
in public service in institutions and in organizations. This 
is a vital spot in education in a democracy; we have tried 
too much to reform or make progress in government from 
within the political system itself, and too little by going 
back to the ultimate sources of social life and educating 
the people as a whole with reference to playing their part 
in political life. 

The work of education in the field of politics is not 
merely to give information, but to establish what we may 
best call morale. We need an attitude and spirit through- 
out the public life of the nation in which there shall be 
constantly displayed the same qualities which we see so 
quickly coming to light in time of war. Enthusiasm, seri- 
ousness of purpose, devotion of the individual to common 
purpose are the essential elements of this war spirit. To 
produce and sustain this in the activities of peace is an 
educational problem. The first task is presumably to es- 
tablish the causes and the organizations through which 
they may be served, but political education itself consists 
largely in the production of public spirit. The correction 
of evils in the political system is of course but a small part 
of the work of political reform. Dowd says that it is the 
low personal idealism of mankind that creates our multi- 
tudinous social problems and strews the path of history 
with wreck and ruin. That is of course true. Raising 
the quality of the personal idealism of the people is the 
real work of political education. Political thought which is 
most concerned as it is now with securing advantage for 
party, class and individual must be superseded by a wider 



264 The Psychology of Nations 

interest in government as a means of aiding the perform- 
ance of the functions of the individual and the group. It 
is the purpose to be accomplished by government, not its 
form, and certainly not the interest of the few or of any 
class that must be emphasized, until partisan politics no 
longer dominates our political life. To accomplish this 
change means, we say, raising the quality of the personal 
idealism of the people. This may seem an ideal and im- 
possible task, but we have some of our experiences of the 
war at least to give us encouragement. 

If we wish to consider details, we may notice that in 
an educational process having such ends as we have sug- 
gested, the teaching of civics, for example, becomes more 
functional, the teaching of what an individual in a com- 
munity and what all governments do, rather than analyzing 
the structure of government. Such civics teaches the 
meaning of individuals as having functions which are rep- 
resented and fulfilled in the institutions and organizations of 
society, including every department of government. It is 
not the intention to enter here into the special problems 
in regard to the content and method of teaching civics 
in the schools, although it is evident that this subject must 
have an increased place in the future. We already see ad- 
vances both in the purpose and the plan of civics teaching 
and in the literature prepared for the schools. Dunn, for 
example, makes fundamental in all the teaching of civics the 
question, What are the common interests which people in 
communities are seeking? Tufts also tries to deal with 
the fundamental ideas upon which government is based. 

Presentation of facts is surely a necessary part of all 
education, for it is an indispensable means of giving the 
content of experience upon which wisdom as a selective 
appreciation of experience is based. But erudition is only 
a part of education. We must hold firmly now to the 
principle which is indeed an aspect of the democratic ideal 
itself, that participation is also a necessary part of educa- 



Political Education in a Democracy 265 

tion. Institutions become real to the child through the 
child's association with them in some active way. We 
shall probably see the idea of free organization carried far, 
and in every organization and every institution, private 
and public, there must, we believe, be some place for the 
services and the interest of all. Let us take the position 
that there is nothing in government, in any of its branches, 
that is outside the sphere of the practical life of the in- 
dividual and we shall have the right point of view even 
for the work of the school room. Government, in a word, 
is not a specialization of function in which the few are 
involved, but it is a generic function, the means, we assert, 
of carrying to completion all the projects of individuals 
in all their social relations. Therefore all, not merely those 
who just now are included among voters, but all women 
and children, must have a part in the general education 
for democracy and also have a part in some way in the in- 
stitutions of government. From first to last government 
must be thought of and understood in terms of what it does, 
as a phase of the total social life of the nation, not as 
something outside the social order. Government is a col- 
lective activity. It is as an aspect of the day's work 
of the nation, that government must be impressed upon 
all — both legal citizens and citizens in the making. 

The second phase of the educational problem in regard 
to government is perhaps after all only the first in an- 
other form. If we hope to have a democratic civiliza- 
tion in any real sense anywhere, we must secure efficiency 
and superiority both in individual and in social conduct, 
not mainly by the exertion of authority (except as a tem- 
porary make-shift) but by making all the people of a na- 
tion susceptible to the influences of the best life and thought 
the nation contains. This means the voluntary and inten- 
tional development of leadership. This we have spoken 
of as a general need; it is also a phase of political educa- 
tion. The genius, the leader, must of course himself be 



266 The Psychology of Nations 

produced in part by education. We must have such condi- 
tions as shall allow natural leadership to come to the surface, 
and every spark of genius must be carefully nourished. But 
there must be also opportunity for what the genius produces 
to work its effect upon all, as a stimulating and directing 
force, in turn arousing the creative activities of the people. 
Democracy seems to be wholly dependent upon what seems 
now the accident of genius for raising it above the medi- 
ocrity of the average, or even preventing a decline in its 
civilization. It is this idea of the relation of the best to 
the average that James evidently thought to be the funda- 
mental point in education. Education consists in his view 
in the development of ability to recognize the good in every 
department of life, the ability to recognize all sham and 
inferiority and the habit of responding to and choosing 
the best. Applied to the problems of government, this 
means such a method of educating the young as will make 
all susceptible to and appreciative of the superior qualities 
of mind and character that may be exhibited in public life. 
Such responsiveness being itself creative and a powerful 
factor in producing and bringing to the front the superior 
man, it must be regarded as one of the most necessary and 
fundamental qualities of a democracy. 

We might single out the teaching of history and biography 
as the best means of educating the appreciative powers in 
regard to values in human life, and the best means of facili- 
tating the emergence of the best individuals and the best 
principles, and of making their influence powerful, but 
after all it is something more than any or all teaching that 
is required. Most fundamentally, no one can refuse to 
admit it is such an organization of the whole educational 
situation as will allow, or rather cause and encourage, pre- 
cisely the total of the good and progressive life of the world 
to play upon the mood and the spirit of the school. As- 
suredly the school is not to-day so fortunately situated. It 
is too much removed from some influences and far too 



Political Education in a Democracy 267 

closely joined to others. Much of the good of society is 
walled out from the school by barriers that arise in politics. 
City ways, all the bad life of the streets, the trivial interests 
of the day, affect the school too much. We are greatly at 
fault in all this, because we do not take education as yet 
seriously enough. There must be now a decision. Either 
the school must be content to remain what it is now, a local 
institution performing a very limited service, or it must 
arise to quite new heights, and mean far more as a civilizing 
and creative force than it has thus far. The school must 
occupy more hours of the day and more days in the year. 
It must claim the child more completely. It must extend 
its influences further, and draw its life from a deeper soil. 
We certainly shall never allow the school to become a great 
evil in society, but it is almost as bad morally to leave it 
but a feeble good. Let no one speak any longer of good 
schools. Our schools were good for yesterday, perhaps. 
But of to-morrow's needs they are not yet even fully aware. 
The school has yet to learn with certainty to lay hold 
upon the fundamental things in the nature of the child, and 
to appreciate the child's real and greatest needs. Continuity 
and creativeness are still for the most part beyond the 
powers of the school. 

But perhaps after all we are asking the impossible. Per- 
haps the forces needed cannot be brought to bear upon 
the child. Perhaps conditions are too unfavorable, and 
an educational situation cannot be devised that will be 
greatly superior to what we have already. Perhaps the 
time is too short. Perhaps worst of all the nature of the 
child himself is too trivial and unpromising. But if we 
believe this, we certainly at the same time conclude that 
democracy is a failure and is not in any true sense possible 
at all. Democracy cannot be created by forces from with- 
out, for this would be indeed a negation of its nature. 
Democracy is self-creative. It grows from within. But 
how can it grow from within unless the new life which en- 



268 The Psychology of Nations 

ters into it be creative ; and how can this life be creative 
and progressive unless it be so lived that it shall absorb 
all the good the old life has in it, and also be inspired to 
go beyond it in every possible way? Unless democracy is 
merely a product and natural direction of growth in society, 
democracy and education are not unrelated to one another. 
If democracy is a good that can be obtained only by con- 
scious effort, we may suppose that one of the greatest factors 
in producing it will be education. 



CHAPTER VIII 

INDUSTRY AND EDUCATION 

We have as yet no deep philosophy of industry. For 
better or for worse work came into the world as a result 
of desire. Men did not desire work, but they desired that 
which could be obtained only by work. These desires mul- 
tiplied and the modern industrial world is the result. When 
material objects alone were desired, the motive of work was 
relatively simple ; but as we pass from the desire for goods 
to the desire for wealth, and to the desire for wealth as a 
means of gaining power and prestige, the industrial move- 
ment becomes more complex. We go on and on, producing 
ever greater wealth and generating more and more power, 
and we do this we say with no deep purpose and with 
no philosophy of life. For the justification of it all, if 
it be under our control at all, we can only say that through 
industry we realize an abundant and enriched life. 

The good and evil of work put upon us some of the most 
perplexing of our problems. Industry, we say, is the way 
to the rich and the abundant life. It makes life more com- 
plex. The relations of life are multiplied by it. It repre- 
sents and it achieves man's conquest over nature. It puts 
force into his hands. It has its ideal side and its romance. 
It gives scope to pure motives of creativeness. But 
the industrial life has also its dark side. It has cre- 
ated the city with all its good and its evil. It has created 
great nations, but see what the added populations consist of. 
It brings on the old age of nations. It stands for struggle 
that is often fruitless and unproductive. It engenders 
moods and arouses interests and powers that lead to wars 

269 



270 The Psychology of Nations 

and revolutions. It fosters sordid interests, and has made 
almost universal the necessity of an excess of toil in order 
barely to live. The great majority of workers do not live 
in their work, because they produce nothing that is in itself 
satisfying. The spirit remains outside their daily life. 
Life is divided into a period of toil without deep interest 
and motive, and play which may be only a narcotic to kill 
the sense of monotony and fatigue. Individuals have spe- 
cialized at the expense of a whole life. Men have been ex- 
ploited and used like material things. Bergson says that 
by industry man has increased his physical capacities, but 
now it is likely that his soul will become mechanized rather 
than that his soul will become great like his new body. In- 
dustry, worst of all, has become an end in itself, rather 
than a means to higher ends. To live, on the one hand, 
to gain wealth on the other, men give all there is in them 
to toil. 

We saw all this before the war, but one important re- 
sult of the war has been that we now see that this industrial 
life which has so rapidly created new institutions, and which 
grips the world almost like a physical law, is not in all its 
ways so fixed and inevitable as we had perhaps thought. In 
regard to the industrial life, more than in any other de- 
partment of life, we see new and radical thought, and the 
possibility of conscious effects, although it must be ad- 
mitted that some of the proposed changes may well cause 
apprehension. 

We had hoped, even before the war, to see industry and 
art become gradually more closely related, and to see in- 
dustry become more socialized. Its physical hardships were 
to some extent already being ameliorated. We hoped to 
separate the great industrial interests from politics, and to 
curb the powers industry has that make it a trouble producer 
in the world. But now, after the war, we see possibilities 
of more fundamental changes in the industrial order than 
these improvements implied. Our thoughts now touch upon 



Industry and Education 271 

the whole theory of the industrial life. We see that by a co- 
ordinated effort and common understanding which it is no 
longer chimerical to hope for, the conditions of the in- 
dustrial life might be very different. In the first place we 
are convinced that the world could produce vastly more and 
could use its products with far greater economy than now. 
We see that much greater return for less labor could be 
gained. Even the desires themselves upon which many of 
the evils of industrialism are based have shown themselves 
to be controllable. It is no longer idle to believe that the 
restraint and cooperation necessary to eliminate most of 
the poverty from the world are possible to be attained. 
The isolation of the individual worker, which has made his 
struggle so hard, seems about to be relieved to some extent 
at least. We even hope for permanently better relations 
between the capitalist and the laborer, and to see some of the 
evils of competition, even the industrial competition among 
nations, lessened. 

Although the interest here is in the relations of in- 
dustry to education, rather than in the practical changes 
pending in the industrial world, we must think of the 
two as related. Changes that take place in political and 
industrial conditions will be likely to be temporary and in- 
effectual unless they are supported by changes in the field 
of education. The reformer and the educator must work 
together. 

Noyes says that the most fundamental change that has 
occurred during the war has been the world-wide assertion 
of public control of industry by the government. Perkins 
says that centralization is the order of the day, and that 
the government now properly takes on many functions that 
once belonged to the states, and that this process of cen- 
tralization naturally extends to international relations. 
Smith speaks of the growing interdependence of govern- 
ment and industry which will especially give security to 
investment in productive enterprises. Hesse says that 



272 The Psychology of Nations 

there must be national team work in all industries, and 
that in a democracy everything that autocracy can accom- 
plish must be repeated, but upon a basis of voluntary co- 
operation. In France it has been proposed by Alfassa that 
there shall be established a department of national economy, 
to bring about a closer cooperation than there has been in 
the past among private interests, and to centralize industry. 
Wehle thinks that in America, even before the war, indus- 
trial concentration was leading to political concentration and 
that the states were losing their relative political importance. 
The grappling of states individually with large industrial 
problems is now, he says, at an end. Dillon has expressed 
the view that England ought to adopt industrial compulsion. 
Clementel, the French minister of commerce, thinks France 
ought to substitute for liberty without restraint in the 
industrial field, liberty organized and restricted. 

There can be no doubt that the world is thoroughly awake 
to the need of more effectual cooperation in industry, and 
it is natural that the first thoughts should turn to govern- 
ment control as the simplest and readiest method of secur- 
ing it. When we examine these suggestions about the co- 
ordination and centralization of industries it becomes evi- 
dent that most writers have been strongly influenced by 
Germany's remarkable success, both in peace and war, un- 
der the system of governmental control of industries. The 
manner in which the German government turned all the 
country into one great industrial plant has appealed to the 
imagination, and many writers see in centralization under 
the control of government the means of curing most of the 
evils of industrialism. There are many proposals, all the 
way from the plan to introduce cabinet ministers with 
limited power to have oversight over industry to the total 
abolishment of the capitalistic system and all the rights of 
property. Many of course, while still believing in concen- 
tration and cooperation, cling to the system of private and 
individual ownership, and believe that the best results will 



Industry and Education 273 

be obtained in the end without any radical change in the 
relations between government and industry, and without 
resorting to any socialistic reform. 

Another phase of the problem of industry in which we 
may expect to see great changes in the future concerns the 
status of labor and its relation to capital. The rising of 
the laboring class is certainly the greatest internal result 
of the war. Here again the question is whether the changes 
will take place by cooperation or by compulsion — either 
on the part of government or of some organized class. Will 
labor and capital continue to be antagonistic, or will they 
find common interest ; or will the only solution be again 
some radical change involving change of government or 
abrogation entirely of our present system of ownership? 
That the position of labor has become stronger as a result of 
the war no one can doubt. Perkins says we are just en- 
tering upon a period of copartnership, when the tool-user 
will be part tool-owner, and capital and labor will share 
more equally in the profits. Increase in wages will not be 
the remedy, but only profit sharing. Others think the same; 
they see that the laborer's discontent is not all a protest 
against his hard physical conditions. He wants more so- 
cial equality, more equality of status in the industrial 
world. He objects not so much to what the capitalist has 
as to what he is. 

There has no more illuminating document come out of the 
war than the report on reconstruction made by a sub- 
committee of the British Labor Party. This report calls 
for a universal minimum wage ; complete state insurance of 
the workers against unemployment ; democratic control of 
industries; thorough participation by the workers in such 
control on the basis of common ownership of the means of 
production; equitable sharing of the proceeds by all who 
engage in production; state ownership of the nation's land; 
immediate nationalization of railroads, mines, electric 
power, canals, harbors, roads and telegraph ; continued gov- 



274 The Psychology of Nations 

ernmental control of shipping, woolen, leather, clothing, 
boots and shoes, milling, baking, butchering, and other in- 
dustries; a system of taxation on incomes to pay off the 
national debt, without affecting the living of those who 
labor. 

Although such a document as this could hardly up to 
the present time have been produced by American workmen, 
since here political doctrines of socialism have never ob- 
tained a strong hold upon the laboring classes, in England 
these radical demands are nothing surprising. They have 
the support at many points of so keen a thinker as Russell. 
Russell does not, it is true, believe that Marxian socialism 
is the solution of the problem of capital and labor, but 
he does believe in the state ownership of all land, that the 
state therefore should be the primary recipient of all rents, 
that a trade or industry must be recognized as a unity 
for the purposes of government, with some kind of home 
rule such as syndicalism aims at securing. Industrial 
democracy, as planned in the cooperative movement, or 
some form of syndicalism, appears to him to be the most 
promising line of advance. 

That such demands and proposals as these are significant 
signs of the times can hardly be doubted. That from 
now the status of the workman will be changed and changed 
in directions more satisfactory to the workman we may 
accept as one of the chief results of the war. Politically 
the laborer is prepared to assert his independence. Both 
his social and his industrial status are likely to be improved. 
He will be better safeguarded against unemployment. 
Wages in the old form and the old tradition that the worker 
has no contract with his employer will, in all probability, 
be less generally acceptable. Work, if these new conditions 
are realized, will mean more to the worker. His own in- 
terests and the purposes of his work will be more harmon- 
iously related. The individual made more secure in his 
work, protected more by law and participating more in the 



Industry and Education 275 

affairs of business and government, will have a sense of 
playing a more dignified part in the social economy. Con- 
ceal as we may the inferiority of the laborer's position 
under the pretenses of democracy and liberty and equality, 
this inferiority of position exists and the inequality that 
prevails in democratic society is certainly one of the fertile 
sources of evil in the world to-day. We have still to see 
to what extent the workman, his lot ameliorated in many 
ways, and his position changed, will himself become a 
new and different man, and thus make the world itself a 
different place in which to live. All that is thus suggested 
we have a right at least to hope for now. If it is also 
worked for with intelligence and good will, why should 
it not come to pass? 

The third idea which is beginning to make great changes 
in the whole field of the industrial life and throughout 
all the practical life is the idea of economy. This means 
that in many ways questions of the values, the purposes, 
and the ways and means of what is done in the world are 
being sharply examined. Labor has been uncritical of its 
purposes, and lavish and wasteful of its energies, however 
watchful it may have been of its rights. Production has 
been governed too much by desire, too little by careful con- 
sideration of need. Distribution has been carelessly con- 
ducted, allowing large losses of time and material. Con- 
sumption has been quite as careless as the rest, and has been 
thoroughly selfish as well. The war has changed many 
of our ideas. Thrift has become a word with a new mean- 
ing. We see what industry at its worst might do in the 
world, and on the other hand what wise control of all the 
motives and processes that enter into labor and all the 
economic life might accomplish. 

Some of these changes are coming from readjustment 
in the coordination of industrial processes themselves. We 
hear much of standardization and stabilization. An eco- 
nomic technique and the control of fluctuating conditions 



276 The Psychology of Nations 

might do much to increase the efficiency of industry in 
every way. This idea of the application of scientific pro- 
cedure to life we see extending to the control of the energies 
of the human factor. We have already spoken of guaran- 
tees that affect the spirit and the morale of labor. We hear 
of the prevention of unemployment, the removal of the bug- 
bear of " losing the job." Most advance of all is being 
made in the application of the principles of mental and 
physical hygiene and of scientific management to the actual 
details of movement and the whole process of expenditure 
of energy, counting costs in terms of time and energy, in 
much the same way as all the items of value that enter into 
production are estimated. Some writers, for example 
Gilbreth, see in this movement a great advance. It is a way 
of giving equal opportunity to all. Economy becomes a 
factor in freedom, since it helps to eliminate the drudgery 
and depression of toil. 

Plainly, then, economy or thrift has a much wider mean- 
ing than mere saving. It is many-sided, and the study of 
economy in the use of essentials is but a part of it. The 
war has, of course, emphasized this, and this idea of saving 
has served the purpose of awakening an interest in the 
whole theory and purpose of work. There is a better un- 
derstanding of values, and of the difference between the es- 
sential and the unessential, and we see that not all labor 
that commands pay is useful labor. Many things that the 
public knew but little about before are becoming better un- 
derstood. Industry, finance, business, taxes, transporta- 
tion, have all to some extent become popular subjects. The 
present high cost of living raises questions in the theory of 
the economic aspect of life that have compelled the at- 
tention of the public. The theory of money, interest, sav- 
ings, foreign investments, the place of gold in the world's 
economy is carried a step further and is popularly more 
extended. We hear all sorts of proposals about the produc- 
tion, the distribution and the consumption of goods, which 



Industry and Education 277 

are intended to make living easier and less expensive. In- 
creased production of staples and more direct route from 
producer to consumer are urged upon all, and the economists 
have many suggestions for increasing our prosperity : while 
financiers try to direct to the best purpose our investments 
at home and abroad. Fisher attacks the whole theory of 
costs at what he believes its root, suggesting a plan of " stab- 
ilizing the dollar itself " by using the index numbers of 
standard articles as units of value, and regulating the 
weight of gold in the dollar according to the fluctuations of 
these. All these plans, hasty and narrowly conceived as 
many of them seem to be, are of interest and have value, 
for they indicate a serious determination to solve the funda- 
mental problems of the practical life. 

Any educational theory that could hope to deal adequately 
with the needs and the impending changes in the industrial 
situation of to-day must take into consideration the basic 
facts both of the individual and the social life. Teaching 
of industry and all attempts to teach vocation must be seen 
by all now to be but a small part of education with refer- 
ence to the industrial life. We must do much more funda- 
mental things than these. We must plan far ahead and 
seek to lay a firm foundation for the idea of cooperation 
which appears to be the leading thought of industrialism to- 
day. Every individual, we should say, ought to be educated 
in the fundamentals of labor, so that he may understand 
for himself what labor means. Finally the idea of thrift 
in all its implications must be made a part of the educational 
program. All this may seem too ideal and impracticable to 
think of in connection with industrial education, but if we 
consider industry and industrialism as the center of our 
whole civilization, as it appears to be now, what less ideal 
educational foundation will be sufficient as preparation for 
and control of the industrial life? No teaching of trades, 
we assert, will be enough. We shall need to apply, in in- 
dustrial education or in an educational plan that takes in- 



278 The Psychology of Nations 

dustry into account, all the methods of teaching: those that 
employ industry itself, but also art, erudition, and play. 

It is first with industrialism as a world condition that 
education is concerned. Industrialism has been, as all must 
recognize, too individualistic. It has motives and moods 
and products, and it grows in social conditions, that are full 
of danger for society. Industrialism lacks a soul, as Berg- 
son would say. Yet it is a movement that sweeps on with 
almost irresistible force. Its most characteristic product 
is not what it turns out in shops, but city life itself. Many 
would agree with Russell in saying that all the great cities 
are centers of deterioration in the life of their nations. 
Education, then, must undertake to control industrialism. 
This does not mean, necessarily, that it must try to check 
it, but that the motives in individual and social life that 
produce industrialism must in some way be under the control 
of educational forces. 

First of all it seems certain that no political arrange- 
ment, and no change taking place entirely within the indus- 
trial system itself, and no simple and direct educational 
procedure will give us control over the forces of industrial- 
ism. It is mainly by preventing the city spirit or mood 
from developing too fast and thus engulfing the children of 
the nation that we can introduce a conscious factor strong 
enough to hold industrial development within bounds. This 
means, we must earnestly demand, turning back the flow 
of life from country to city by educating all children in 
the environment of the country. This would have a double 
effect upon the industrialism of the day. It would break 
up the present inevitable inheritance by the city child of all 
the ideals and moods of the city, and it would give oppor- 
tunity for training in the activities that are basic to all 
industry, which alone, in our view, can give to industry 
a solid and normal foundation. By such effects, in such 
a general way, upon the children of an industrial nation, we 
might reasonably hope to prevent the evil effects upon our 



Industry and Education 279 

national life from the fatigue, the routine, and the deaden- 
ing of the spirit which even under improved conditions can- 
not be overcome in an industrial life that is left to its 
monotonous grind and its morbid excitements and exaggera- 
tions. 

Another work that education must in the end do for 
the industrial life is to infuse into it an ideal and a pur- 
pose. Industry is too individualistic, we say. It works for 
a living, for power, from necessity. It lacks through and 
through as yet the spirit of free and intelligent coopera- 
tion for common and remote ends. Cooperation in the 
industrial world, we have seen reason to believe, is likely 
to be the great word of the future. It is precisely the work 
of education to make the future of industry an expression 
of free activity, to make it democratic, and to such an ex- 
tent, we might hope, that socialism, whether as a govern- 
mental interference or as a class system, would not be 
necessary — or possible. In trying to give industrialism 
an ideal, we must presumably go back to elemental mental 
processes. We must, in the beginning, present the world's 
work dramatically to the child. We must give work in- 
terest, and it is certainly one of the chief purposes of that 
nondescript subject we call geography thus to give the child 
a deep appreciation of the world as a world of men and 
women engaged in work. We must show industry as a 
world-wide purpose, not as something essentially individual 
and competitive. We must show it as an adventure on 
the part of man in which he goes forth to seek conquest over 
the physical world; we must think of it as a means to an 
end, of fulfilling purposes not all of which perhaps can as 
yet be foreseen, but which certainly can be no mere satis- 
faction of the individual's desires of the day. This is what 
we mean by putting a soul into industry. Soul means pur- 
pose — purpose which includes more than the desires of 
the individual, and in which the interests of the world as a 
whole are involved. Industry that has thus a purpose, and 



280 The Psychology of Nations 

that is imbued with a spirit of freedom takes its place 
among the psychic forces and becomes a part of the mechan- 
ism of mental evolution. It is this idealism of industry, 
toward the production of which we must turn every educa- 
tional resource, that must offset its materialism. This is, 
in part, the work of the aesthetic experiences, the dramatic 
presentation of the day's work to the child; but art can 
of course work only upon the soil of experience; the child 
must see the world teeming with human activity, but he 
must observe it in a detached way, rather than as a par- 
ticipant in its realism and its dull and its unwholesome 
moods. Then we shall have a content upon which the 
aesthetic motives can work. In this idealized industrial ex- 
perience, we try to make visible the real motives which in the 
future must dominate the world's work. 

All this may seem too general and too ideal, but if 
we do not begin with broad plans, and if we do not take 
a far look ahead, we shall fail now at a vital point of the 
social development of man. The result at which we aim 
is the socialization of the motives of industry. We make 
work voluntary by bringing into it persuasively and in- 
sidiously deep motives and interests which represent social 
purposes and ideals. Given these motives and the begin- 
ning of a change from the relatively more individualistic 
to the relatively more social spirit in industry, the actual 
means of cooperation would not be far to seek. Work 
would become by its own inner development under such con- 
ditions, something different from an unwilling service of 
the individual, a compulsory service to family or state. 
Everything we can do to give to children and to all workers 
an intelligent appreciation of the social meaning and pur- 
pose of work is both industrial training and an educa- 
tion in basic social relations. This socialization of the 
moods of work and the founding of them upon the neces- 
sary experiences, is as important as anything education is at 
the present time called upon to do. Given this foundation, 



Industry and Education 281 

precisely the form industrial education, in the ordinary 
sense, shall take, seems to be of secondary importance. 

Turning now to another phase of the industrial problem 
on its educational side, one cannot escape the conviction that 
the rising tide of the powers of labor presents urgent prob- 
lems to the educator. The common man, as we call him, is 
to take a greater part in the affairs of business and state, 
and the education of the common man with reference to the 
especial capacity, as worker, in which he seeks this new posi- 
tion, becomes highly important. This education of the peo- 
ple with specific reference to work is of course something 
more than teaching vocation. Education, indeed, with any 
explicit attention to labor itself, whether in its industrial 
or its political implications, is but a part of the educational 
problem. All education for the democratic life is involved 
in it. The whole problem of specialization comes up, and 
indeed all questions of social education in one form or an- 
other. 

Specialization, in particular, can no longer be treated 
with the indifference that has so far characterized our in- 
dustrial education. The ideal of fitting the boy for work 
is as naive in one way as that of our generalized educa- 
tion is in another. // the war has taught us anything be- 
yond a doubt, it is that specialization must never be such a 
differentiation as shall infringe upon the common ground of 
human nature. We must take this into consideration in all 
our vocational training. We must preserve an identity in 
all the fundamental experiences. In a democracy this ap- 
pears to be wholly necessary, and to outweigh all considera- 
tions of efficiency. The individual must be kept whole and 
generic, so that each individual is an epitome, so to speak, of 
the virtues and the ideals of the nation. The humanity of 
the man must be first, and his special function secondary. 
This does not imply that we must not give to all children 
individual and vocational training. All must be directed 
towards life work. We may even carry vocational train- 



282 The Psychology of Nations 

ing further than it has been extended anywhere as yet, but 
we must see that industry occupies the right place in the 
school, and in all educational processes. It is neither the 
whole method and purpose of the school, nor something 
simply added to the curriculum. It is a phase of the life of 
the school, both in its active and its receptive states. The 
child must live in an atmosphere in which both present and 
future usefulness are assumed and provided for. The idea 
of a life of work must be made early an accepted plan of 
the child, and it must be one of the entirely general tasks of 
the school to see that the tendency of the child in the school 
is toward occupation. Occupation must in fact be made to 
grow naturally out of the life the child leads in the school. 
All those disharmonies in our industrial countries such 
as the prevalent discord between working and capitalistic 
classes seem, we have said, to be social rather than economic 
in nature. Social education, then, is the main cure for 
them, if we wish to attack them at their root. The motives 
of pride and the sense of inferiority have to be dealt with 
in a practical manner. We sometimes quite overlook the 
importance of habitual moods or states of feeling in society 
and in the school. These moods are powers which mo- 
tivate conduct. Any form of education in which the poorer 
and less favored are given an opportunity to acquire the 
experiences, and through these the moods, that especially 
distinguish the more favored class, strikes at the general dis- 
parity in society which takes form in such antagonisms as 
that between capital and labor. It is not difference in de- 
gree but difference in kind of experience that appears to 
separate the classes from one another. The difference 
seems to lie in those parts of life which are sometimes be- 
lieved to be the unessentials and which indeed our whole 
educational policy assumes apparently to be trivial. The 
fundamental differences between the poor and the rich, the 
favored and the common people, is in the sphere of the 
aesthetic. Distinction of manner and an environment rich 



Industry and Education 283 

in aesthetic qualities are the main advantages of the few, 
as compared with the many. Social experience is what is 
most needed by the many, but of course this experience can 
never be gained by making the educational institutions 
merely democratic, and especially social experience cannot 
be gained in a school in which all situations are studiously 
avoided in which really significant social relations are likely 
to be experienced. We gain no social experience in the 
naive and the highly special activities of the school which 
for the most part is arranged in such a way as to ex- 
clude organized social relations. This is a process in which 
such leveling as there is tends to be downward, whereas 
what we need is for all the truly aristocratic elements in 
our national life to have an opportunity to propagate them- 
selves and to extend to the many. Leaving aside the need 
of a differently organized social life in the school, we 
might say that there is hardly a greater need in democratic 
countries now than that of recruiting the rank and file 
of teachers from a socially superior class. These socially 
favored individuals have given themselves loyally to the 
service of country in a time of war, for two if no more 
of their deepest motives have been appealed to — the 
dramatic interest and the spirit of noblesse oblige. There 
are duties in times of peace which are quite as important, 
but which as yet appeal to no strong motive, and have not 
even been presented in the form of obligation. Once these 
common tasks were made to appear a part of the fulfillment 
of duty to country, the way to finding deep satisfaction in 
them might be opened. Social and dramatic elements would 
be introduced as a matter of course. 

Another need throughout our whole effort to educate 
all in and for a life of work, one which has appealed to 
many writers in recent years, is the need of making all 
the experience of work more creative or more free and 
animated or joyous in mood. This means, again, that in 
all industrial education the mood must be social and the 



284 The Psychology of Nations 

form (Esthetic or dramatic. Social values must be felt 
through social activity, and the sense of worth in labor and 
of value of the product which is felt in the social mood 
must be enhanced by the dramatic form of the activity 
and the artistic quality of the product. This is also the con- 
dition for creative activity. Some writers apparently now 
see in this need of making the activity of all those who 
work more creative, more free and more joyous the crucial 
problem of education and of social adjustment. This is 
Russell's constant theme. Helen Marot in " Creative In- 
dustry " says that our problem is to develop an industrial 
system that shall stimulate and satisfy the native impulse for 
creative production. It is difficult to see how, by any 
other educational process than one which is essentially 
aesthetic and social, we can make much headway toward 
changing the conception of work from the now prevalent 
one of a means of making a living, more or less under com- 
pulsion, to that of a voluntary social act done both for its 
utility from the standpoint of the individual and also because 
of its social value, and performed to some extent, however 
humble the work, in the spirit of the creative artist. 

For the adult generation that now works (and for how 
many generations to come we do not know), we cannot 
hope to make ideal conditions. Work will still be work, 
with its evil implications, as toil without complete inner sat- 
isfaction, and without sufficiently free motives. But the 
direction in which practical changes should be made seems 
clear. There must still be a lessening of the hours of rou- 
tine labor, until there are perhaps no longer more than six 
or five devoted to vocation. The remainder of life is not 
for idleness but must be in part productive or the lessened 
hours of routine will not be possible. There must be pos- 
sibility of both practical and recreational activities outside 
the regular day's work, as well as for educational work, all 
of these in part at least publicly provided for. This ac- 
tivity may serve many purposes and accomplish a variety 



Industry and Education 285 

of results. As educational it ought to open up new oppor- 
tunities; it must fulfill the desire for creative activity; it 
must be a socializing power; it must lead to an apprecia- 
tion of the nature and value of skill and efficiency; it must 
introduce all to the higher world of art and the intellectual 
life. Above all it must impress deeply the truth that growth 
in the normal life is never ended. 

The third phase of industrial education which is to be 
emphasized now is the teaching of what we have called 
thrift. This idea of thrift, for pedagogical purposes, is 
equivalent to the broad principle that purposes in this world 
are achieved by the expenditure of force — by the control 
of energies which are not unlimited in amount as now con- 
trolled and which are subject to definite laws. Since ob- 
jects which are to be secured by the expenditure of energy 
differ in value it is a part of this education in thrift, indeed 
an important and necessary part, to give to all such knowl- 
edge and powers of appreciation as will enable them to rec- 
ognize that which is essential, and to give the essential and 
the unessential their proper places in the whole economy of 
life. 

It will never be right of course to inspire a parsimonious 
spirit in regard either to goods or to energies. Life it- 
self and all its energies must be given freely; material goods 
must not be evaluated too minutely. The miserly life is not 
what we wish to teach. Still there is a wise attitude toward 
all material things and toward all values which recognizes 
goods as means to ends, which places true values high and 
demands economy in the use of all things that must be con- 
served in order to attain them. 

It must be a part of the work of physiology, which thus 
branches out into psychology, to teach to all the efficient 
use of human energies. These energies are the precious 
things in the world ; they must be valued and respected as 
the source of all efficiency. The idea of economy of move- 
ment, from this standpoint, has an important place in all 



286 The Psychology of Nations 

motor or industrial or manual training. Processes must 
be regarded as definite series of acts in which we may- 
approach perfection. Technique in motor operations is 
not to be regarded lightly as a mere finish applied to useful 
acts. It is the expression of an ideal of efficiency and econ- 
omy. Children recognize the value of technique in games; 
its wider and more practical application needs to be im- 
pressed. 

In the same way knowledge of the precise values and uses 
of material things ought to be imparted. The war has had 
the effect of showing all of us the values of materials and 
the relations of materials to one another. It has given 
us a sense of the great powers of natural wealth, and also 
of its limitations and the weak points that exist now in 
our economy. The war has proved to us how closely re- 
lated the things we use lavishly and wastefully may be 
to the most ideal possessions. It has shown that the pro- 
duction, the distribution and the use of wealth of all kinds 
are parts of the accomplishment of the main purposes of 
life and that all these things belong to the sphere of duty; 
and that no individual can escape obligations in regard 
to economy. 

Education, therefore, must lay foundations both for an 
understanding of economy and for the practice of it. First 
of all, every individual, we may assume, ought to have 
some experience in the production of the elementary forms 
of material goods, and in the conversion of them into 
higher values and in their conservation. We looked care- 
fully to some of these activities as a war measure. It is 
hardly less necessary in times of peace. We should teach 
these things, not simply because the practice of them is 
educational, but because the practice of them is useful, and 
is a necessary service, on the part of every individual, to 
the world. Adding to the world's store of goods and con- 
sciousness of the need of doing this directly or indirectly 
should be regarded as a fundamental duty and habit. To 



Industry and Education 287 

establish both the habit and the sense of duty, we may 
suppose, a stage is necessary in which the individual's con- 
tribution shall be direct and tangible. Hence the value of 
those educational activities that deal with foods and their 
conservation. 

On a little higher plane, and in a little different way 
we can apply the same thoughts to the whole cycle of ma- 
terial things. The distribution of wealth is of course in 
part a technical and a theoretical problem. It is also a 
practical and a general one. All at least ought to be judges 
of the waste that now goes on in the industrial life because 
the " middleman " has occupied such a place of vantage 
in the economic order. In teaching occupation and in all 
preparation for vocation ought we not to take this into 
consideration? Occupations that are purely distributive 
and which involve a great waste of human energies and of 
materials have been unduly emphasized, at least by default 
of more positive preparation, by the school. Because they 
are easy and untechnical and have a little elegance about 
them, in some cases, they fit in very well with the generality 
and bookishness and detachment from real life that the 
school sometimes represents. 

The occupations that are more creative, both in the field 
of material things and of ideas, have, relatively speaking, 
been neglected. Inventiveness especially seems to be a qual- 
ity that we have supposed to be a gift of the gods, and we 
have given but little attention to producing it, or even giving 
it an opportunity to display itself. Have we not gained 
from the war new impressions both about the powers of 
the human mind in producing new thoughts and in con- 
trolling both material and psychic forces, and also about 
the necessity for developing originality and independence? 
Is it too much to expect now that greater ingenuity be 
displayed in education itself to the end of producing more 
originality? This is a hackneyed request to make of the 
school, but it seems certain that we do not succeed in ob- 



288 The Psychology of Nations 

taining through our educational processes the highest pos- 
sible degree of productiveness of mind, as regards either 
quantity or quality. It is because indeed we seem to be 
very far from our limit in these respects, and because better 
results might perhaps so easily be gained that it seems neces- 
sary to make this plea so often. More activity, more art, 
greater enrichment of the mind, ought to have the desired 
result, especially if the environment of the school could be so 
changed that its moods would be more joyous and intense. 
These changes are at any rate demanded for so many other 
reasons that if they fail to make the intellect more produc- 
tive, they will not be completely a failure. 

Education in the use of wealth must now be regarded 
as a part of moral education. In America we have ignored 
the necessity of thrift, and the idea of thrift has certainly 
had no part in education. The proper use of everything we 
produce or own is a fundamental part of conduct, and it 
ought to be a persistent theme in education. We have now 
the interest and incentive that have come from the war, we 
say, for we have felt, if only remotely, what poverty 
means, and we have seen that no amount of natural wealth 
and no degree of civilization can wholly insure us against 
famine and disaster. We need throughout our national life 
now, again, something like the old New England conscience 
in the uses of things, applied in a different way, of 
course, and now made more effectual by our broader science. 
The encouragement of this spirit will perhaps make the dif- 
ference in the end between having a world seriously engaged 
in progressive tasks with its material forces well in hand, 
and a world which in all its practical affairs, large and 
small, is operated according to the principle or the lack 
of principle of a laissez faire attitude throughout life. Sav- 
ing in a good cause, and with a clear conscience and de- 
termined purpose, is one of the elements of the higher life 
and is far removed from miserliness. It is a principle of 
adaptation of means to ends, and that any school which 



Industry and Education 289 

trains this power is reaching fundamental principles of the 
practical life needs hardly to be said. 

The higher uses and appreciation of wealth which we 
are wont to call plain living and high thinking, the moral 
idea of philanthropy, the aesthetic values and hygienic im- 
plications of the right kind of simplicity must not be omitted 
from the educational idea of thrift. To impart something 
of the spirit of restraint and generosity, and to make the 
child feel what living simply, and with definite purpose, 
and making means serve one's real ends in life imply, to 
teach the joys of the higher uses of common things, is no 
mean achievement. But can we indeed do these things 
which after all have their main virtue in being general 
and social, and a part of a program? All we can say is 
that if we are to have a better order, and if we think edu- 
cation has any place in it, economy in its broadest sense, but 
economy also as applied to the details of daily life must 
also have a place in it. It is both fatuous and insincere 
to talk about good things to come, and not be willing to 
pay the price in labor and in sacrifice necessary to obtain 
them honestly. Especially when the price of these things 
is in itself no demand for the sacrificing of any real good, 
but quite to the contrary is a summons to a more joyous life, 
we should be glad to pay it. 



CHAPTER IX 

NEW SOCIAL PROBLEMS 

The social problems of education that have arisen be- 
cause of our new world relations and new internal condi- 
tions in our own country are of course only special phases 
of social education as a whole, and social education can- 
not indeed be separated sharply from other educational 
questions. There are, however, new demands and new 
evidences, and new points of view from which we see social 
education (or better, education in its social aspects), in a 
somewhat new and different light, as compared with our 
ideas of the school in the days before the war. We have 
discussed some of these social problems. Now we must 
consider them both in their general significance, and also 
in their more specifically pedagogical aspects. 

There appear to be two things that social education needs 
especially to do now : create and sustain a firmer unity at 
home — a wider and deeper loyalty on the part of the in- 
dividual to all the causes and to all the groups to which 
he is attached ; and to make our world-consciousness a more 
productive state of mind. It is perhaps because such edu- 
cational proposals as these are generally left in the form 
of ideals and things hoped for in a distant future, and 
are not examined to see whether they may be made defi- 
nite programs, and are legitimate demands to be made 
now, that we are likely to regard all suggestions of this 
nature as impracticable. And yet the production of morale 
at home and a social consciousness adequate for our new 
relations abroad seems to be a proper demand to make even 
upon the school. In part, of course, and perhaps largely, 

290 



New Social Problems 291 

the need is first of all for practical relations, but we must 
consider educationally also the fundamental and creative 
factors of the psychic process itself which must in the end 
sustain the relations that we have established at such cost 
and shall now begin to elaborate as practical functions. 

The greatest work of social education to-day is to in- 
fuse into all the social relations a new and more ardent 
spirit. It is the elevation of the social moods to a more 
productive level, we might say, that is wanted. ^Esthetic 
elements, imagination, and the harmonizing of individual 
and social motives are needed. War has shown us the pos- 
sibilities of exalted social moods ; what we ought to do now 
is to consider how we may make our morale of peace equal 
in efficiency and in power to our war morale. This is in 
great part a problem of social education. 

Every nation has its own especial social problems which 
must become educational problems, and be dealt with in some 
way according to the methods available in schools. In 
England the social questions seem to be more in mind and 
to be better understood than here. They are more con- 
scious there of social disharmony and of living a socially 
divided life than we are. They have seen at close range 
the dangers of class interests and individual interests. In- 
dividualism, class distinction and party politics and the in- 
dependence of labor came near proving the ruin of Eng- 
land. The Bishop of Oxford has expressed himself as be- 
lieving that the blank stupid conservatism of his country, as 
he calls it, is really broken and that a new sense of service 
is actually dawning in all directions. Trotter says (and he 
too is thinking of England) that a very small amount 
of conscious and authoritative direction, a little sacrifice 
of privilege, a slight relaxation in the vast inhumanity of 
the social machine might at the right moment have made a 
profound effect in the national spirit. Generalizing, and 
now thinking of social phenomena in terms of the psy- 
chology of the herd, he says that the trouble in modern 



292 The Psychology of Nations 

society is that capacity for individual reaction — that is 
for making different reactions to the same stimulus — has 
far outstripped the capacity for intercommunication. So- 
ciety has grown in complexity and strength, but it has also 
grown in disorder. 

Such disharmony of the social life of course exists also in 
America. We have not the sharp division of classes and 
interests and the demonstrative and protesting individualism 
that are to be found in England (our individual rights are 
taken more for granted perhaps) but for that very reason, it 
may well be, our disharmonies are all the more dangerous 
and difficult to overcome. The tension of the individual and 
the social will (using MacCurdy's expression) is great. 
We are highly individualistic in our mode of life, as is 
shown both in domestic and in public affairs. Specializa- 
tion and an intense interest in occupations that bring in- 
dividual distinction and large financial returns have cer- 
tainly taken precedence over the more fundamental and 
common activities and interests. 

It is these fundamental and common activities and in- 
terests and sympathies that ought to be the chief concern of 
social education, or perhaps we had better say that all 
our educational processes ought so to be socialized as to 
broaden sympathies and make activities common. Educa- 
tion must constantly strive to make the common back- 
ground of our national life more firm and strong. More 
important to-day than any further education in the direc- 
tion of specialization of life in America is the securing 
of a strong cohesion throughout society by means of com- 
mon interests and moods. It is true that specialization car- 
ried out in some ideal way may provide just the condi- 
tions needed for the best social order, but this can be only 
in so far as individuals become specialized within the whole 
of society, so to speak, in which individuals continue to have 
a common life. Individuals as wholes must not be dif- 
ferentiated and left to find their own means of coordina- 



New Social Problems 293 

tion and association, or be brought together artificially by 
law or convention. Specialization must be made the re- 
verse side, as it were, of a social process in which at every 
point coordination is also provided for. At the present 
time, it is the latter rather than the former that is of most 
importance to us. 

Social education in a democratic country must always 
be a matter of the greatest concern. In autocratic socie- 
ties the cohesive force exists in traditions or can at any 
moment be generated executively. The autocratic country 
can be held together in spite of social antagonism. In a 
democracy this cannot be. We voluntarily accept some 
degree of incoordination and confusion for the sake of 
our ideals of freedom. We do not wish cohesion based 
upon any form of pessimism or fear — fear of enemies 
without or of powers within. To secure unity in our own 
national life we must work for it incessantly, and we ought 
to be willing to, for unity means so much to us. It is not 
cohesion at any price that we want, but voluntary and 
natural union, and to secure that we should not hesitate 
to make our educational institutions broad enough to in- 
clude the education of the most fundamental relations of the 
individual to society. We want neither a " healthy egoism " 
nor a morbid self-denying spirit that is only a step re- 
moved from slavery — neither instinctive independence nor 
an artificial and enforced social organization. We must not 
be deceived either by a vague and false idea of liberty or 
by the equally vicious ideal of militarism with its super- 
ficiality of social relations and its pedagogical simplicity. 
Both these ideas represent social life on a low plane. 
Healthy individualism, even with its strong sense of toler- 
ance and comradeship and its respect for law and order, is 
not the kind of social ideal that we should now cultivate, 
for it is too primitive a state to fit into our already complex 
social life, or to be a basis for the firm solidarity we need 
for the future. As for militarism, it may become a mere 



294 The Psychology of Nations 

shell, giving the appearance of social unity when its bonds 
are mere shreds and the last drop of moral vitality has 
gone out of it. 

Our need and problem are plain enough. We wish to 
develop social cohesion and unity upon a natural and perma- 
nent basis of social feeling expressed in, and in turn pro- 
duced by, social organization, voluntarily entered into for 
practical and for ideal purposes. Such solidarity can 
neither be made nor unmade by external forces. We must 
form and sustain it by creating internal bonds. We live, 
in any great society, always over smoldering fires, however 
highly civilized the society, and we are always threatened 
with the eruption of volcanic forces. It is fatuous to 
ignore this, and to make a fool's paradise of our democracy. 
Our problem is to produce such a social life as shall keep us 
safe through all dangers — dangers from enemies without, 
and within, and underneath. A democracy, or indeed any 
society after all and at its best, contains the makings of 
the crowd and the mob. Organized as it is, it is always 
an order made of material units which may enter into dis- 
order. Society is based upon social consciousness, upon 
the consciousness of kind, but it also has collective force. 
The crowd and the collective force are always contained in 
society. However far human nature is removed from its 
primitive form, the social order is always fragile. Mental 
operations that are not intelligent and are not emotional in 
the ordinary sense, but which consist, so to speak, of com- 
mon factors among primitive feelings, may gain and for 
a time hold the ascendancy. Eruptions in the social con- 
sciousness are of the nature of morbid phenomena, and 
are rare and exceptional expressions of the collective life, 
but we are never free entirely from the menace of them. 
Social order, we say, is always fragile. We must not over- 
look that fact. It is this characteristic of the social life, 
the potentiality of mob spirit and the forces of primitive 



New Social Problems 295 

anger ani fear, that lead some writers to think, wrongly 
we believe, that this is the psychological basis of wars in 
general. War comes out of the order of society. The 
higher ecstatic states and the ideals of man enter into 
them. These things we speak of are of the nature of dis- 
order, or are only the order of pure momentum. But what- 
ever the truth may be about the relation of instinct to war 
and however remote the dangers to ourselves from the 
forces which in society make for disorder, it is the work 
of social education to control, transform and utilize all 
social and collective forces, the primitive emotions and in- 
stincts, the moods of intoxication and all the higher ecsta- 
sies of the social life, and it is only, we suppose, by thus 
consciously and with premeditation controlling these forces 
that in any real sense we can " make democracy safe for 
the world." 

It is the idea of society coordinated by intelligence and 
by common interests and moods that we must always 
hold before us. Trotter says that civilization has never 
brought a well-coordinated society, and that a gregarious 
unit consciously directed would be a new type of biological 
organism. If this be so, the time seems peculiarly ripe to 
make advance toward this better social solidarity. Both the 
promise and the need seem greatest in the great English 
speaking countries now. There is waiting, we may truly 
think, a larger sphere of life for all democratic countries. 
If it be conscious direction alone that can bring about the 
change, education has a long and a hard task before it, to 
make the democratic peoples capable of such conscious di- 
rection. This must come in part by the development of the 
idea of leadership, and by the production of all the condi- 
tions that make leadership possible. In part it must come 
by the clear perception of definite tasks to be performed 
by nations and by all organizations within nations — tasks 
which have all grown out of the relations existing within 



296 The Psychology of Nations 

society. In part it means cultivating intelligent apprecia- 
tion of social values, and developing in every possible way all 
the social powers. 

What we appear to need most in our social education 
just now is a conception of what the individual is and 
what the social life is in terms of the desires and the func- 
tions they embody. These are the raw materials with which 
we work. We should then treat all our social problems 
in a somewhat different way from that in which they are 
mainly dealt with now. We should try especially to make 
harmony in society not by maneuvering so that we might 
have peace and good feeling for their own sakes, but by co- 
ordinating the functions which are expressed in the life of 
the individual and in all social relations. That is precisely 
what is not being done now, in our present stage of society, 
either in the life of the individual, or in the wider life of 
society. People live without deep continuity in their lives, 
and we are not conscious enough of the ideal relationships 
individuals should have with one another, in order to 
make the social life productive. In a word we do not suffi- 
ciently take account of the purposes to be achieved, but are 
too conscious of states of feeling. We do not yet appear 
to see all the possibilities contained in the social life, what 
voluntary unions are necessary, and what kind of community 
life must be developed before we can have a really demo- 
cratic order. 

We must not be content, certainly, with a merely super- 
ficial and external solidarity or the purely practical gre- 
gariousness of the shops or the artificial forms of the con- 
ventional social life. Society must more and more accom- 
plish results by the social life. Coordination in the per- 
formance of a few obvious functions, and enthusiasm for a 
few partisan causes, will not be enough. Nor will such or- 
der as militarism represents suffice. Is it not plain, indeed, 
that democracy must rest upon deeper and far more com- 
plex coordinations than we have now, and that social feel- 



New Social Problems 297 

ings or moods must be made more creative ? It is the desire 
to accomplish ends through social organization, rather than 
the desire to possess and enjoy, that must be made to dom- 
inate it. To effect such changes in the social life must be 
in great part the work of education. 

Social education in our present time and conditions might 
very well be considered in terms of the antinomies which 
exist in society. These antinomies represent the obstacles 
to national unity. They stand for inhibitions which are 
expressed in feelings that are wholly unproductive. Each 
one of them is a measure of so much waste, so much failure 
and lack of momentum, so much disorder and disorganiza- 
tion. A program of social education, we say, might be 
based upon a consideration of these antinomies. It would 
consider mainly how the waste and obstruction of these 
conflicting purposes of the social life might be overcome by 
giving desires more harmonious and more positive direc- 
tion. A complete account of social education from this 
standpoint would need to take notice of many disharmonies 
now very evident in our life as a nation. Among them 
would be found sectional antagonisms, party opposition, 
frictions of social classes and industrial classes, religious 
differences, disharmony between the sexes, racial antipa- 
thies. Some of these we have already touched upon briefly. 
Some others seem to require further mention in the pres- 
ent connection. 

The lack of understanding and sympathy between lower 
and upper classes in society plays a larger part in democratic 
America than we are usually inclined to admit. There are 
divided interests, divergent mores, lack of unity and co- 
ordination in some of the most urgent duties because of the 
antagonism of classes and the lack of understanding, on the 
part of one, of the ways of another. Especially in civic life 
the unproductiveness of the situation is very apparent. 
What money and advantage on one side combined with will- 
ing hands on the other might do is left undone. 



298 The Psychology of Nations 

In part this antagonism of classes is merely the result of 
difference in manners. There are manners and forms that 
constitute a common bond among the members of a class 
everywhere. Ought we not to take advantage of this ex- 
ample and use the suggestion it offers for bridging over 
the differences that we complain of? We have seen during 
the war, also, how well common tasks can unite all classes. 
Does not our educational institution afford us opportunity to 
continue this advantage, and make common service lead 
more directly to understanding and appreciation, not for the 
sake of the sympathy alone, but because of all the practical 
consequences and the opportunities for the future that are 
thus opened up? We assume that social feeling may be 
created through social organization. Mabie says that 
America is distinguished by its capacities for forming help- 
ful organizations. We must make the most of this habit, 
which presumably is derived from the neighborliness and 
comradeship of our original colonial life. We need many 
group causes, not artificially planned as trellises upon which 
to grow social feelings, but, first of all certainly, in order 
to accomplish those things that can be done effectively only 
socially. 

The secret of harmony among classes is presumably not 
to allow any class to have vital interests which are exclu- 
sively its own, since to have an exclusive vital interest means 
of course to live defensively or to carry on offensive strategy. 
The chief interest of the great working class at the present 
time is plainly to secure a living, and it is the sense of iso- 
lation in this struggle which in part at least is the cause of 
many unfavorable conditions in our present social order. 
Ought not education to prepare the way for a different atti- 
tude in which all should become vitally interested in the 
economic problems of all? This does not mean an educa- 
tion directed toward enlarging the spirit of philanthropy; 
it means mainly organization to serve common purposes. 

These social problems are very numerous. They are 



New Social Problems 299 

both national and local. Any city which will undertake to 
solve in its civic relations this problem of securing greater 
social unity in social causes will provide an object lesson 
which will be of the greatest value. It is in these local 
groups perhaps that some of the best experimental social 
work may be done. Here the educational and the political 
modes of attack can best be coordinated, results can be made 
most tangible, and the primitive and simple forms of soli- 
darity most nearly realized. It is indeed by going back to 
these simpler forms of social life and seeking means of co- 
ordinating the group in fundamental activities that the 
greatest headway will be made in the solution of wider 
social problems. 

Another of the disharmonies which social education must 
from now on undertake to control is the disharmony and 
the inequality of the sexes, not so much as this appears in 
the domestic life as in the broader relations of the social 
life. Brinton says that the ethnic psychologist has no 
sounder maxim than that uttered by Steinthal, that the posi- 
tion of women is the cardinal point of all social relations. 
Every one, of course, now recognizes the fact that the posi- 
tion of women is to-day in a transitional and experimental 
stage. Conflicting motives are at work, and on the part 
of neither sex do the highest motives seem to prevail, nor 
is there a full realization anywhere of the values that are 
at stake. Men are thinking of the question of the position 
of women too much from the standpoint of expediency, and 
are scrutinizing too closely the immediate future. Women 
perhaps are thinking too much just now of their rights. 
There is a decadent form of chivalry or at least a sexuality 
that perpetuates conventions and interests that on the whole 
seem to interfere with progress. Jealousy and in general 
the tense emotional relations between the sexes obscure 
larger issues. Thus misunderstanding or antagonism, or at 
least disharmony, prevails in relations in which there should 
be perfect harmony of ideals and purposes, and productive 



300 The Psychology of Nations 

activities of the highest nature. The education of women, 
whether for the domestic life or for the life outside the 
home is plainly but a part of the educational problem. The 
sexes have different desires, and it is precisely the work of 
harmonizing these desires, and regulating and coordinating 
activities and functions, that is the most important part of 
social education in regard to the sexes. 

It is not at all difficult to see what the basic need is. 
It is not so easy to find practical means of applying the 
remedy in the form of education, because the whole system 
of living of the sexes must in some way be affected. The 
generalized principle on the practical side seems clear. All 
classes or groups in society must learn to think and to act 
not in terms of and with reference to the desires of their 
class alone, but with regard to wider tasks and values that 
are not fully realized by the most natural and the conven- 
tional activities of the class. The question is not one of 
making a moral change — converting individuals or classes 
from a spirit of selfishness to that of altruism. What we 
need is an educational process and a social life in which 
the nature of the individual and of the class is revealed as 
social, as best represented and satisfied in situations in which 
both the individual and the wider social idea work together. 

Practically, we should say, the problem of education of 
the sexes with reference to one another and to a wider social 
life consists first of all in actually educating them together 
not merely in juxtaposition but in relations of a practical 
character. The relations of the sexes have evidently been 
mainly domestic and emotional, or in cases where they are 
practical the position of women has been little better than 
servitude. Of social coordination there has been little. 
Education of the sexes through situations in which the spe- 
cial abilities of each sex are brought into action, doing for 
the wider social life what the natural and instinctive differ- 
entiation of activities has accomplished in its way for the 
domestic life seems to be the main principle now to be em- 



New Social Problems 301 

ployed in the education of the sexes. Women must be made 
to see that the ideal of independence which is uppermost at 
the present time is only the mark of a transitional stage, and 
that coordination in which of course competition of vari- 
ous kinds cannot be entirely eliminated will be the final ad- 
justment. We should have no fear of placing the sexes, 
in their educational situations, in positions where competi- 
tion is necessary, since through competition fundamental 
desires may be brought to the surface and regulated. Pro- 
vided we admit at all that a new social adjustment is needed 
between the sexes, we can hardly fail to see that it is pri- 
marily in a practical life lived together that both education 
for the new order will best be conducted and the new order 
itself realized. 

The details of method of what we have called social edu- 
cation for democracy we can only suggest here and of 
course in a very imperfect and tentative way. All aspects 
of education and every department of the school are in- 
volved; and every available method employed in education 
must in some way be turned to the purpose of developing 
social relations. In a very general way we think of these 
specific processes of the school as methods of learning, 
methods of art, and methods of activity, although of course 
in reality there can be no such sharp separation of them as 
this might imply. 

There must be some place in the school now for a subject 
which in a general way might be designated as social history. 
We must teach the whole story of the social life of our coun- 
try in such a way as to reveal the motives of classes, parties, 
sections, and of all organizations, institutions and princi- 
ples. Such teaching should have the effect of bringing to 
light the causes of the disharmonies of society, and it should 
also be a means of conveying the feelings and moods as 
well as the ideas that govern the conduct of all groups that 
make up our national life. We must teach sympathetically 
what the desires and intentions of all are, on the assumption 



302 The Psychology of Nations 

that behind all conduct there are natural causes and essen- 
tially sound instincts. By showing the desires of groups in 
their relation to one another, their disharmony and their 
possible harmony, we indicate what society as a functioning 
whole may be, and we may say that it is the chief end to be 
gained by the intellectual treatment of the social life to 
make clear what the ideal of social unity for practical life 
is, and what the main obstacles are that now stand in the 
way of it. By this social history we do not mean, moreover, 
something abstruse and academic suited for the college 
alone. Wherever the social antagonism is experienced, at 
whatever age, there is the opportunity to begin to set the 
mind at work about it, and to prevent the formation of 
prejudice and resentment. These states of mind begin very 
early indeed, and they are hard to eradicate. 

A very large part in the work of social education is played 
by methods of education that we may call aesthetic. This 
must mean not only the inclusion of the methods of art in 
presenting facts, but we must bring to bear all kinds of 
aesthetic influences upon the social life. Social life in which 
there is introduced the dramatic moment is one of the main 
objectives of all education. It is in the recreational life 
that some of the best conditions for the realization of social 
moods in dramatic or aesthetic form are obtained. In the 
recreational experience the social states must be made pro- 
ductive of social harmony, as they themselves tend to be. 
In these experiences the conflicting motives of the individual 
and society, and of individual with individual, and the op- 
posing desires of the individual are harmonized by means 
of ideal experiences in which the desires are exploited. 
Since we here touch upon the whole theory of the aesthetic 
in its practical application, we cannot be very explicit and 
clear, but the main service of the aesthetic social life ex- 
perienced typically in the form of recreational activities, 
ought to be plain. Recreation is a means of giving the 



New Social Problems 303 

common experience so much needed in democratic countries 
like our own — common feelings, common activities and 
interests. This store of common life, containing exalted 
social feelings, expressed in play and art — languages which 
all nationalities can understand — must constantly be in- 
creased. All institutions that control the leisure hours of 
the people must be made educational as means of raising 
the social life to a higher level and making it more har- 
monious and productive of common interests. It is indeed 
one of the functions of the recreational activities and insti- 
tutions to create and sustain public morale. 

In the recreational experiences under control of the school 
we have the opportunity to educate the deepest and most 
powerful of motives. Play and art we should suppose, 
therefore, ought to have a greater part and more serious 
recognition in the school. We cannot of course accom- 
plish much merely by crowding more arts and plays and 
games into the curriculum. It is something larger and 
more transforming that is wanted. We need to make the 
school take a greater place in the life of the child; it must 
reach a deeper level of human nature, in which the motives 
of play and art lie, and there must be a broader exposure 
of all young life to those influences of the social life every- 
where which contain our highest social ideals. The place 
of art and to some extent of play as the methods and the 
spirit of the school is to convey persuasively to the child 
this larger and better life in which we expect him to take 
part. 

Neither erudition nor art nor both together can, of course, 
fulfill all the requirements for a social education suited to 
our present needs. It is presumably in the social life itself, 
in the form of a practical activity, that social education will 
in great part be gained. This educational social life, which 
is also practical, will, however, be one in which every oppor- 
tunity is taken to show the social life in its historical per- 



304 The Psychology of Nations 

spective, and to make clear its purposes and meaning; and 
in which sympathetic moods and intense social states are 
realized by conducting this social life, so far as possible, so 
that it will be subjected to the influences of what we may call 
in a broad way art. 



X 

RELIGION AND EDUCATION AFTER THE WAR 

The war, which has left no field of human interest un- 
touched, has raised many questions about religion that must 
be dealt with in new ways — about its validity, its power, 
its future. The impression the whole experience of the war 
seems to convey is that religion has failed to be either a 
great creative force or a great restraining power, although 
to express this as a failure of religion may imply more than 
we have a right to expect of it. Religion did not cause the 
war, but it certainly did not prevent it. It had no power 
to make peace. Yet we see that now religion is needed more 
than ever, and that if the social life be not deeply infused 
with the religious spirit, and if we do not live as a world 
more in the religious spirit, something fundamental and 
necessary will be wanting which may be the most essential 
factor of progress and civilization. The war leaves us with 
the feeling, perhaps, that until now the world has had far 
too many religions and too little religion. There has been 
too much of creed and too little of deep and sustaining re- 
ligious moods. Perhaps, as Russell says, we are to be con- 
vinced that religion has been too professional ; there has 
been too much paid service, and too little voluntary service. 
Such conclusions of course have in them all the reserva- 
tion that personal reactions must have, but it is easy to be- 
lieve that in the life of such a nation as our own, and in- 
deed in the world, no practical unity will ever be permanently 
reached unless there be a firm basis in a common religious 
foundation. This we might say is made probable by the 
truth that religion is the most fundamental thing in life, and 

305 



306 The Psychology of Nations 

if there be no unity and common understanding in that 
sphere, there can be none in reality anywhere in life. Dif- 
ferences in creed mean little, except in so far as they con- 
ceal basic agreement and make artificial barriers ; differences 
in the way of understanding and valuing the world mean 
everything. We want a common religious faith — common 
in the possession at least of the moods which make a har- 
monious social life possible, and of the spirit in which the 
world's work can, we may believe, alone be done. 

Upon such grounds one might maintain that a very im- 
portant part of the work of education everywhere is to teach 
now more natural religion, or rather perhaps that the school 
must be everywhere conducted to a greater extent in the 
spirit of religion. Then we might hope to see religion be- 
coming actually a power in the social life, helping to trans- 
form the crude forces and purposes of the day into higher 
ones. With such a religious basis we might begin to see 
the working of God in history and in the world as a whole, 
and we should feel in the history of the world and in the 
world that is before us the presence of reality. Then we 
should have a common ground for the sympathy and under- 
standing without which not even the most practical affairs 
can be conducted efficiently. That ideal in education, often 
expressed by the educator, which holds that the purpose of 
all teaching is to convey the meaning of the world to the 
child, to make the world live in epitome, so to speak, in the 
soul of every child, is religious and nothing else, and quite 
satisfies the demands of our present day. 

If such a standpoint be the right one, certainly the ambi- 
tion of any nation (or indeed of any group) to have a re- 
ligion peculiar to itself and an outgrowth of its own culture 
is unfortunate, and indeed comes from the very essence of 
morbid nationalism. In such desires there is thinly veiled 
the hope that through religion the old claim of nations to 
the right to temporal supremacy may be vindicated. La- 
garde, in about 1874, was probably the first to say that 



Religion and Education After the War 307 

Germany must have a national religion, but during the war 
this hope has been expressed again and again — Germany 
must have a new religion, befitting a great independent peo- 
ple, and must no longer be dependent for its religion upon 
an old and inferior race. Whether this longing for a new 
religion has not been in reality a longing to be upheld again 
by the old pagan faith, which was a fitting cult for the na- 
tionalistic temper, with its ideal of force, may justly be 
asked. It is interesting to remember that in Japan also, in 
recent times, there has been a demand for a national religion 
that should unite all the creeds in one. That this idea of 
a national religion, as contrasted with an universal religion, 
is opposed to the spirit of Christianity is plain, and the 
claim that Germany has not been able to understand the 
key-note of Christianity, as it is revealed in humanity and 
justice, may therefore be said to have some foundation in 
truth. 

Can we say that the work of education, in the religious 
life, is that of inculcating and extending Christianity? It 
might indeed so be interpreted, and with a liberal enough 
understanding of Christianity we should say that this is true. 
But after all, it is Christianity as the vehicle of certain 
fundamental religious moods and ideals that, from an edu- 
cational point of view at least, is of the greatest concern. 
It is the optimistic mood, the ideal of justice and humanity, 
the recognition of the worth of the soul of the individual, 
the ideal of service — it is these qualities of Christianity 
rather than its specific doctrines that we must now empha- 
size in our wider social life, and such religion is natural 
religion, or philosophy or Christianity as we may choose to 
call it. Any experience, indeed, that fosters such moods 
and ideals has a place in religious education. Who can 
doubt that such religion must henceforth have a large place 
in the world? It will be the test in the end of the possi- 
bility of sincere internationalism. Unless we can have com- 
mon religious moods we can have no universal morality that 



308 The Psychology of Nations 

is founded upon secure feeling and principles, and unless 
we can include the whole world in our religion, we shall cer- 
tainly not be able to include it in any sincere way in our 
politics. 

No religion, finally, will be profound enough and have 
great enough power to be thus a support of a future world- 
consciousness unless it be a religion of feeling rather than 
primarily of ideas — a religion in fact capable of inspiring 
ecstatic moods. And this ecstasy of feeling can never in 
our modern world be a prevailing quality of the religious 
life unless religion be something that extends over all life 
and draws its power from all the energies and capacities of 
the psychic life. The religion of our new era, we may be 
sure, if it be in any real sense a religion of the world, will 
not be something apart from and above other experiences. 
It will be a secular religion and a democratic religion, a 
quality and spirit of life as a whole. Experience referred 
to what we believe is real and universal, and subjected sin- 
cerely to all the capacities and criteria of appreciation that 
we possess is religious experience. Religion, educationally 
considered, is a means of giving to life a sense of reality and 
of value. That spirit should pervade and inspire all we do 
in the work of education. 



CHAPTER XI 

HUMANISM 

There has much been said during the war to the effect that 
the great struggle was essentially a conflict between the 
spirit of humanism and some principle or other which was 
conceived to be the opposite of humanism. Humanism is 
said to be opposed to rationalism, or to nationalism, or spe- 
cialization, or paganism, or Germanism as a whole, hu- 
manism often being thought of as the spirit of Greek or 
Christian thought and philosophy. 

There is truth, we should say, in these views. Humanism 
in a broad sense emerged from all the purposes of the war 
as the principle of the greater part of the world, as opposed 
to the idea of Germanism. This spirit of humanism, how- 
ever, is no single motive or feeling. It is a complex mood, 
so to speak, and it is not to be regarded as strange that it 
has been felt and described in various ways, and that it is 
not yet clearly understood. Humanism appears to be most 
deeply felt as the appreciation of the common and fundamen- 
tal things in human nature. It inclines toward the employ- 
ment of feeling, or at least to subjective rather than to 
purely objective principles in the determination of funda- 
mental values in life. Humanism includes an interest in 
personality, which is of course the most basic of the common 
possessions of man, and it is therefore interested in justice 
and in freedom. Humanism as thus an appreciation of 
fundamental values in life by feeling rather than by princi- 
ple, belongs to the deeper currents of life, those that flow 
in the subconscious — it is close to instinct, to moods, and 
the religious and the aesthetic experiences. 

309 



310 The Psychology of Nations 

The later German philosophy of life we might mention as 
a denial of much that humanism asserts. Here we see a 
doctrine of force, an ideal of life based upon the elevation 
of conscious will to its first principle. If we seek concrete 
contrasts to this anti-humanism we might mention our own 
national life, governed by an idea of free living, which has 
made possible the assimilation of many stocks, in a life in 
which common human nature is regarded as the supreme 
value. Extreme specialization, rational principles, objec- 
tive standards are watchwords of the plan of life that is 
most opposed to humanism. In this life instincts and values 
determined by feelings are brought out into the clear light 
of consciousness and are there judged with reference to 
their fitness to serve ends determined by reason. It is all 
noon-day glare in this rational consciousness. Collectivism 
is based upon coercion and upon calculation of the value of 
order in serving practical purposes, themselves determined 
by a theory of society, instead of upon social feeling or 
upon a natural process of assimilation of the different and 
the individual into a common life. Specialization also, in 
this philosophy, is a result of calculation rather than of 
a belief in the value of the individual, and is gained by the 
sacrifice of those experiences which, if we hold to the hu- 
manistic ideal, we regard as essential to the life of the indi- 
vidual and to society. This calculus of values extends, of 
course, into the field of international life. Here too con- 
duct is based upon estimation of effects, freedom is relative 
to and subordinate to economic values. A theory of the 
state takes precedence over all subjective ethical principles, 
and there must be a disavowal of all native sentiments and 
judgments as regards justice which issue from an appreci- 
ation of the worth of personality and other fundamental 
human values and possessions ; and all common human senti- 
ments which would stand in the way of carrying out the 
decisions of reason and state-theory or any political policy 
must of course also be denied. 



Humanism 311 

This contrast, however inadequate our analysis of the 
spirit of humanism and its opposite may be, will at least 
show that the idea of justice, which in the humanistic ideal 
grows directly out of the appreciation of the value of per- 
sonality is the central practical principle of humanism, and 
it is exactly as an opponent of the idea of justice on the 
ground of its alleged weakness, that the rationalistic or the 
nationalistic philosophy is best conceived. 

It is upon this question of justice that we must take our 
stand for or against humanism. If we are humanists we 
believe in the rights of individuals, whether men or nations, 
to their own life and independence, which they are entitled 
to preserve through all forms of social processes. Justice 
means recognition of the right of individuals to perform all 
their functions as individuals, and humanism is precisely 
an appreciation of the values of the individual as such a 
functioning whole. If we are humanists we believe that 
this principle of justice, and this feeling of justice ought to 
be cultivated and made world-wide. This is the ideal of 
equal rights to all human values. Hence it is the mortal 
enemy of all philosophies of life which place any principle 
above that of justice and its moral implications, whether in 
the narrower or the wider social life. This is humanism. 

There are various ways of interpreting humanism as a 
practical philosophy or principle of education. Burnet says, 
perhaps not very completely expressing what he means, that 
the humanistic ideal of education, as contrasted with the 
merely formal, is that the pupils should above all be led to 
feel the meaning and worth of what they are studying. We 
should say that the meaning of humanism in education is 
that the child should understand and appreciate the mean- 
ing and worth of all human life. This requires that edu- 
cation should so be conducted that the child may learn- to 
see — rather to feel and appreciate — the inner rather than 
the merely external nature of all life that is presented to 
him, and in which he participates. Not language, but 



312 The Psychology of Nations 

thought ; not history, but experience, is his field. Justice de- 
pends wholly upon an ability to come upon reality in the 
realm of human nature. This implies not only intellectual 
penetration, but a form of sympathy which consists of put- 
ting oneself as completely as possible into the life of that 
which is studied. 

All this means, it is plain, a power in the educational proc- 
ess, a spirit and a mood in all education which we have not 
yet in any very large measure attained. What is required 
is indeed that children should live more intimately with 
reality, so to speak, and that we should not be satisfied when 
they have merely learned about it. We shall not be con- 
tent, however, with an educational process which, in ful- 
filling these requirements for more life, becomes merely 
active. Life must also be dramatic and intense and abun- 
dant. All the mental processes — the feelings, the intel- 
lectual functions and not the will alone must participate in 
this active life. 

We shall soon see, no doubt, and in fact we are begin- 
ning already to see a renewed interest in all the arguments 
for and against a humanistic as opposed to a scientific cul- 
ture and curriculum for our schools. It is the humanistic 
side from which, it is likely, we shall now hear the most 
pleas, for the war has ended, they say, in victory for hu- 
manity and for humanism — hence for the humanities. It 
is the Christian and the Grseco-Roman civilization that has 
prevailed. Victorious France, whose culture is founded 
upon that of the Greek and the Roman, has vindicated the 
supreme value of that culture. On the other hand we hear 
that our present age has become an age of science. If sci- 
ence has been a factor in causing the war, science has also 
won it. If industrialism involved the world in disaster, the 
world will be saved by more and better work, more prac- 
tical living, wider organization for the production of goods 
and of wealth. Therefore our curriculum must become 
more practical. We must have more of business and in- 



Humanism 313 

dustry, more vocational training, more training that sharp- 
ens the intelligence. 

There is a truth which cannot be overlooked in the claim 
of the humanists, but the acceptance of it as it stands as a 
philosophy of education is not without its serious dangers. 
What we may well apprehend is a reactionary philosophy of 
education, and of all culture. We begin to hear very strong 
pleas, for example, for a school in which language, litera- 
ture, and perhaps history become the center. West 1 asks 
for a wider recognition of the humanities after the war. 
Moore 2 says that the war is a victory of the civilization 
finally established by the Romans on the basis of law, over 
the barbaric ideas of power. Seeing this he is led to plead 
for a closer union now between Latin and modern studies, 
binding civilization of to-day with the thought and feeling 
of old Rome. Butler 3 says that we are surely coming back 
to the classical languages and literature. 

Such conclusions as these raise many questions and per- 
haps doubts and apprehension. The ideal they express of 
penetrating the heart of civilization and experiencing in 
the educational process the inner life rather than the outer 
form of life, must indeed appeal to all, and we should all 
as humanists agree that this ideal expresses what humanism 
means and is the center of a true philosophy of education — 
but whether this ideal can be realized by any school that 
clings to the old classical learning, even in spirit, is quite 
another matter. To-day, if ever, we need to go forward in 
education. Our spirit must be that of the searcher for new 
truth, and for a better life. The old will not satisfy us 
either as a model and ideal or as a method. No already ac- 
cumulated culture material will be adequate for our new 
school. 

Our schools of to-morrow, zve should conclude, must still 
be inspired by the scientific spirit, but what we need is sci- 

i« 2 Educational Review, February, 1919. 
3 Teachers College Record, January, 1919. 



314 The Psychology of Nations 

ence humanized, and science in the service of moral princi- 
ples. One may well ask whether it is not now the most 
opportune time to leave our classical learning behind, and 
try to find a more adequate culture in which to convey the 
spirit of our new humanism. If we have won a victory for 
humanity, as we think, and have kept alive the Christian 
spirit by means of a meager culture, we need not still cling 
to that culture if we can find something better. Even if 
modern Germany has misused science and brought it to re- 
proach, we need not be prejudiced against science. We 
need more science but we need to bring science into closer 
relation to the whole of human life. We need more of all 
the psychological sciences as an aid to our appreciation of 
history as the story and a revelation of the meaning of 
spirit in the world — and it is this way rather than through 
language that we must undertake to know and to explain 
life. On the other hand, it is for the business of practical, 
social living that the material sciences should have most sig- 
nificance in education. There is no science, not even mathe- 
matics, that cannot be taught as a phase of the adventure of 
spirit in the world, and none that cannot in some way be 
made to aid spirit in finding and keeping its true course in 
the future. Such use of all culture is what we mean by 
humanism. The secret of the difference in the educational 
ideals of those whom we may call the old humanists and the 
new is that to one education means predominantly learning, 
and to the other it means mainly living. Living, for the 
child, means growing into the life of the world by partici- 
pating in spirit and in body, according to the child's needs 
and capacities, in the activities of the world. To gain a 
consciousness of the meaning of those activities through a 
knowledge of their history and by an appreciation of their 
purpose is indeed the main purpose of learning. 



CHAPTER XII 

AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE IN EDUCATION 

Throughout this study we have again and again been led 
to consider the relations of the aesthetic experiences to the 
practical life. It is as the repository of deep desires and 
as the appreciation of values that the aesthetic may be most 
readily seen to be practical, but it performs other functions. 
As ecstatic experience it is the source of poiver in the con- 
scious life, and it was indeed the belief in art as a means of 
attaining power that has given art its place in the world. 
The aesthetic experience is the form also in which desires are 
brought into relation to one another, harmonized and trans- 
formed, or transferred to new objects. So the aesthetic 
is the type of adaptation in the inner life. 

We have asserted that all life, and certainly the educa- 
tional process, must have its dramatic moments, since the 
dramatic experience, as ecstasy of the social life, is the ex- 
pression of social feeling in its highest form. The aesthetic 
experience is the central point of experience, so to speak, at 
which social ideals impinge upon and influence and mold 
pure nature. Art is the form in which play, representing 
biological forces, is carried to a higher stage, and made a 
factor in conscious evolution. The aesthetic experience is 
a practical attitude in another way. It is by our aesthetic 
appreciation, more than we commonly understand, that we 
judge life as a totality, that we estimate the fitness of its 
parts to belong to the whole, and that indeed we guide life 
when we judge it not according to principles which so often 
are seen to be inadequate, but when we try to bring to bear 

3i5 



3 1 6 The Psychology of Nations 

our utmost of powers of appreciation and to find ultimate 
values. 

Such a recognition of the relation of art or the aesthetic 
to life we see often expressed in the literature of the day. 
It is a sign of the times — of an effort to attain higher 
powers, to take more comprehensive views of life, and to 
gain deeper insight into it. It is a phase of the serious- 
ness of purpose which the war has aroused in us. Dide 
speaks of a deep but obscure need that drives all human 
beings to put themselves in harmony with the universal, and 
says that this is the end and purpose of the aesthetic tenden- 
cies. This phase of the place of the aesthetic is seen and 
expressed in various ways. Some think of it as a significant 
change in the attitude of life which is to bring about an era 
of peace. Clutton-Brook, an English writer, says that un- 
less we attain to some kind of beauty and art, we shall have 
no lasting peace. We shall never have freedom from war 
until we have a peace that is worth living. Some see in 
the humanistic spirit an essentially aesthetic principle. The 
fairness and justice of the French, the spirit of the English 
that expresses itself in their ideal of sportsmanship, some 
attribute to the aesthetic spirit. 

All this is in keeping with our new experiences of life in 
all its dynamic expressions. It becomes easier for us to 
see the truth about the nature of the aesthetic and of all 
other powers of consciousness, since consciousness has re- 
vealed itself to us as itself so great a power. The aesthetic 
experience may no longer appear to be only a joy, something 
subjective, but, indeed, as a practical force in the world. 
The aesthetic is a feeling of power, but it is also an experi- 
ence in which mental power is generated, and it must be 
employed to such an end. The aesthetic mood is a mood 
of happiness, but it is also a mood of persuasion, in which 
something is being done to the will, and in which desires 
are being turned continually toward new objects, and 
composite feelings are being formed which will direct the 



Aesthetic Experience in Education 317 

course of future experience. So art and the aesthetic ex- 
perience are not things apart from life, but may even be 
thought of as the method and the quality of life in some 
of its most dynamic forms. They are not added to life as 
an ornament or a luxury, but are the spirit in which life is 
lived when it is indeed most productive. 

When we make specific analyses of aesthetic experience 
we find represented in it all the deep motives and tendencies, 
of life. This gives us our clew to the practical application 
of the aesthetic in the business of life. All it contains, all 
the art and the play of the world must be put to work, al- 
though this is a conclusion that might readily be misunder- 
stood. We do not expect to harness the powers of child- 
hood to the world's tasks, or expect industry to become fine 
art, but we do expect art and play to be something more than 
passive and unproductive states. We expect them to sus- 
tain and to create the energies by which the world's work 
is to be carried on. We would utilize them to give more 
power to life at every point, and to make all activities of 
the practical life more free and creative. And was there 
ever a time when power was more greatly needed — in in- 
dustry, in political life and in every phase of life both of the 
individual and of society? 

But it is not only in creating and doing that the world 
needs art to-day, in the sense in which we mean to define 
it. An aroused world is called upon to feel to the depths of 
reality, and to draw from these depths new and more pro- 
found valuations. We stand at a point where many things 
in life must be tested and judged anew, where the danger 
of perverting and misjudging many things is great. It is 
by the powers of appreciation gained in dynamic states of 
consciousness, we may believe, rather than by discoveries 
and an accumulation of data that we shall be most certain 
of finding true values, and the way of extrication from our 
present grave doubts. 

Can one hesitate to conclude, then, that in all our edu- 



3 1 8 The Psychology of Nations 

cational experiences, we must try not only to train these 
powers that we call aesthetic, but to give opportunity at every 
point for the exercise of them as selective functions, and as 
a means of creating and expressing power in the mental life? 



CHAPTER XIII 

MOODS AND EDUCATION \ A REVIEW 

In the philosophy of education it is with moods that in our 
view, we have most of all to deal. Man, we have a right 
to say, is a creature of feeling, not of instinct or of reason. 
It is not the instinct as a definite reaction to stimulus or as 
an inner necessity, nor emotion as a subjective response to 
this stimulus that is the driving force of conduct, but rather 
the more lasting and deeper and more complex states or 
processes that we can call by no other name than moods. 
Since it is in the moods that the most profound longing or 
tendency or desire is represented, we say that moods are 
the object of chief concern in a practical philosophy of life. 
These moods are the repositories, so to speak, of instinct, 
impulse, tendency, desire, and it is therefore by the control 
and education of moods that the individual in all his social 
and in all his personal aspects will be most fundamentally 
educable if he is educable at all. 

It is as the seat of the will to power, we might say, that 
the moods which are the main sources of human energy are 
to be conceived. The craving for power, as a generaliza- 
tion of more primitive desires, comes to take the position 
of the main motive in life. The craving for power is a 
desire, as we see when we analyze it, that expresses itself as 
a longing for ecstatic or intense states of consciousness, and 
an abundant life. It is a craving to be possessed by strong 
desire and also for the satisfaction of many desires — often 
vicariously, since the objects desired may be confused and 
general. So this motive of power and the ecstatic states 
in which it is expressed or realized is no instinct and no 

319 



3 2 ° The Psychology of Nations 

pure emotion. It is an outgrowth and culmination of in- 
stincts, a fusion of them into a new product. 

It would be going too far afield to try to summarize here 
the psychology of moods or of the motive of power in the 
individual and in society, but the main fact needed for the 
moment seems plain. In this motive and its expression in 
feeling and conduct there is a very general tendency which 
is the source of many forms of interest and enthusiasm, of 
ambition, of the spirit of war, of various kinds of excite- 
ment, and to some extent of morbid and criminal tendencies. 
The spirit of war we think of as a summation of the same 
forces as those which in other ways appear as the energies 
behind various enterprises having quite different objectives. 
War is an anachronism, we may believe, a wrong direction 
taken by the forces of the social life, an archaic expression 
now, let us say, of the will to power which might and ought 
to have different objectives. In the life and the mood of 
the great city we see a very varied expression of the motive 
of power. The city life is still a crude life. It satisfies 
deep desires, but in it desires for we know not what are 
aroused. It is indeed as the seat of eager, unsatisfied desire 
that the city is best of all characterized. These desires 
readily take shape in the city as the spirit of war and as a 
craving for excitement of various kinds. 

These same forces re-directed or finding different objects 
and working under different conditions appear in moral, 
religious, or aesthetic forms. In these higher experiences 
and more progressive moments in history or in the life of 
the individual, the forces which at other levels emerge in 
different forms and in search of different objects we may 
think of as transformed, or given new direction; but to 
suppose them annihilated or suppressed is to misunderstand, 
according to our view, the whole process of the development 
of spirit. Life is not a process in which instincts are bal- 
anced, or in which good motives stand in sharp contrast to 
bad motives, or in which an original selfishness is opposed 



Moods and Education: A Review 321 

and gradually overcome by an altruistic motive. We think 
rather of very complex processes in which many desires, 
gathered into moods, find many forms of expression. 
There are prevailing moods — of war and of peace — and 
these moods are deep forces, containing both the desires 
and the sources of energy, so to speak, out of which our 
future will be made. The ecstatic states of the social life, 
the moods of war and the enthusiasm of the periods of rapid 
change are conditions in which energies and purposes are 
deeply stirred. These are the moods of intoxication, if we 
wish to describe them by pointing out one of their chief 
common characteristics. Peace is a reverie, we may say, 
in which the purposes and the results expressed and attained 
in the more dramatic moments are elaborated and fulfilled, 
and in which new impulse is gathered of which the dramatic 
moment is itself the expression. But throughout the whole 
course of history and through all the life of the individual, 
the same motives are at work. Life in its fundamental 
movements and motives, we should argue, is both simple and 
continuous. It is fragmentary and complex only on its 
surface. 

The whole problem of the nature of education of course 
resolves itself, from this point of view, into the question 
whether progress is something inherent in nature, or is 
something controlled by man. Or if we cannot make so 
sharp a contrast between nature and will, shall we say that 
progress is in the main and in all essential ways one or the 
other? Does conscious effort, the having of ideals, exert 
any profound effect upon the history of spirit? Does it 
accelerate, give direction, provide energy? Is the course 
of history inevitable or is the making of it in our hands? 
We can see what, in a general way, so far as regards the 
transformation of the fundamental motives of life, the 
order of development has been — how the original and 
basic desires or instincts have become merged and confused 
in the more general desires and moods, how the motive of 



322 The Psychology of Nations 

power has emerged, finding so varied expression as we see 
in the whole movement of art and play in the world, how out 
of these motives of art and play more controlled enthusiasms 
have arisen. But the part in this movement played by con- 
scious direction does not thus far appear to have been great. 
A movement of and within consciousness it has been, and 
no mere biological or physical development, but when we 
speak of conscious will or any ideals controlling the course 
of spirit in essential ways, we find as yet only a beginning. 
And yet, this does not indicate that in the future conscious 
direction may not be even the greatest factor in evolution. 
It is difficult to see how we can know with certainty that we 
have such powers; but to refrain from acting as though we 
had is also difficult, and indeed impossible. 

As a working hypothesis, at least, we seem to be allowed 
to assume that much will depend, in the future, upon the 
extent to which conscious factors are brought to bear upon 
the world's progress as a whole, upon the form in which 
the world-idea shapes itself, and the power which is put 
behind that world idea by the educational forces of the 
world. The world appears now to stand balanced at a criti- 
cal moment, its future depending upon whether old ideals 
and primitive emotions shall prevail, or whether a new 
spirit which is perhaps after all but a sense of direction 
growing out of the old order shall become the dominating 
influences. Whether the consciousness of nations shall be 
creative and progressive seems to depend now upon the ex- 
tent to which the whole life of feeling is influenced by ideas 
which, although they are products, as we say, of the primi- 
tive biological processes that underlie history, are also out- 
side these processes, as definite purposes, desires, visions, 
ideals. At least we seem to depend now upon these supe- 
rior influences for many things that we regard as good — 
for the rate at which we shall make progress, and for the 
certainty of making progress at all. Upon these conscious 
factors directing and shaping the plastic forces represented 



Moods and Education: A Review 323 

in the moods of our time, we shall assume, the course of 
history will depend. 

We are no longer to be satisfied with natural progress. 
We have gone too far and too long, let us say, upon a rising 
tide of biological forces, and we have not yet realized what 
conscious evolution might mean. We have been too well 
satisfied with the physical resources and the psychic energies 
that seemed sufficient for the need of the day. A world in 
which democracy is going to prevail can no longer live in 
this way. It will not grow of itself in a state of nature. 
Its principle, on the other hand, forbids program-making 
after the manner of autocratic societies. Democracy, as 
the form in which the youthful and exuberant spirit of the 
world now makes ready for creating the next stage of civili- 
zation, will advance, we may suppose, neither by nature nor 
by force. It is the main work of our day to find for our- 
selves a new and better mode of shaping history, by bringing 
to bear upon all the social motives of the day the best and 
strongest influences. Our whole situation is from this 
point of view an educational problem. Probably there was 
never a greater need than that the democratic forces of the 
world now have great leadership. It is a practical world, 
a world of politics and of business, but it is also a world 
exceedingly sensitive to many influences, good and bad, a 
world in which, we may think, nothing great and permanent 
can be accomplished unless moral, religious and aesthetic 
influences prevail and give to our civilization its new domi- 
nant. 

It will depend upon these conscious forces — upon our 
efforts to make progress and upon the clarity of our vision 
— it must depend upon these — whether in the future our 
great war shall be looked back upon as after all an upheaval 
of primitive forces and a debauch of instincts, or as the be- 
ginning of a new life. It is for us to create out of the war 
the foundation of a better order. We cannot go back to the 
old regime. Our enthusiasms will either be directed to bet- 



324 The Psychology of Nations 

ter things, or the emotions aroused by the war will run riot 
and finally settle into habits on a low plane, and destroy, it 
may be, all that civilization has thus far gained. All things 
seem possible, in this critical time. 

Stated in the broadest possible way, the educational prob- 
lem of our times seems plain. We must lay hold upon and 
set to work for a higher civilization the motives and pur- 
poses that in the past have worked obstructively, and now 
destructively. A great work of our day is to understand 
these motives and forces that were the main factors in the 
cause of the war, and make them count for progress. That 
they are powerful forces we can have no doubt. They are 
not for that reason hard to direct, at least not necessarily so. 
We see that, whether in war or in peace, we need greater 
power in the social life. Life must be made to satisfy the 
longing for intensity and abundance of experience. But 
this abundant life that we now seek cannot be something 
merely subjective and emotional. To see this is indeed the 
crucial test. This subjective life cannot remain an ideal 
in a world determined to become democratic, to make prog- 
ress, to be a practical and well-coordinated world. Abun- 
dant life must now be sought in the performance of func- 
tions which express themselves in practical aims and conse- 
quences. The prevailing mood and form of this life may 
still be dramatic, and indeed it must be dramatic. The pos- 
session of this quality is the test of its power. 

Such views, of course, imply that our practical educational 
problem is something very different from that of finding an 
outlet for emotions. For example, to search for a substi- 
tute for war now is a superficial way of looking at the 
problem of the control and education of the social conscious- 
ness. We think of the motives that have caused the war, 
according to these older views, as bad instincts or evil emo- 
tions, as we are usually asked to think of the motives behind 
intemperance, and the habits of gambling and the like. By 
some form of katharsis we hope to drain off these emotions 



Moods and Education: A Review 325 

(unless we undertake merely to suppress them). This we 
say is a narrow view of the problem, merely because the 
motives that underlie the conduct we deplore are not bad 
instincts, or indeed instincts as such at all, but rather feel- 
ings or moods which are variable in their expression, com- 
plex, and educable. They have no definite object of which 
they are in search, so that we may think the only way to 
thwart them is to find some object closely resembling theirs 
which may surreptitiously be substituted for them. These 
motives are indeed broad and general. We must do with 
them what education must do all along the line, find the 
fundamental desires they contain and utilize the energies 
expressed in these desires in the performance of functions 
— these functions being the purposes most fundamentally 
at work in the social life or representing our social ideals. 
Such an ideal of education invites us to work beneath the 
political and all formal, institutional and merely practical 
affairs and to lay our foundations in the depths of human 
nature. There we shall begin to establish or to lay hold 
upon continuity, and there bring together the fragments of 
purpose which we find in the life we seek to direct. This 
which one can so easily say in a sentence is, of course, the 
whole problem of education. These things are what we 
must work for in establishing and sustaining our democracy, 
for we must, to this end, make forces work together, in- 
stead of separately and antagonistically as they themselves 
tend to do. It is the same problem, at heart, in the edu- 
cation of the individual — to harmonize desires, and to 
create a higher synthesis of energies than nature itself will 
yield. And in the new and wider field of international life 
that opens up before us, the problem is still educational. 
The educational forces of the world must begin now the 
gigantic task of national character building. The spirit of 
the nations, the divergent motives of power, of glory, of 
comfort and pleasure-seeking that are said to dominate na- 
tions, the justice, and loyalty, and steadfastness and truth 



326 The Psychology of Nations 

which at least they put upon their banners and into their 
songs must be made to work together in a practical and 
progressive world, or to make such a world possible. 

The Germans like to interpret the tricolor of their flag as 
signifying Durch Nacht und Blut zur Licht. But plainly 
the night and bloodshed do not always lead to light, and of 
themselves they cannot. Nor, must we think, need the 
world continue always to seek its way toward light only 
through the blackness and guilt of wars and revolutions. 
In some distant day, let us think, justice and morality will 
have been bred into all the social life, and life will be lived 
more in the spirit of art and religion. Then they will see 
that, under the influence of these forces we call now edu- 
cational, an old order will have given way to a new by im- 
perceptible degrees, and it will be no longer through dark- 
ness and bloodshed that the world must make its way to 
light, but need only go through light to greater light. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The following list contains the titles of a few books and 
articles that have contributed data or suggestions to this 
study. It is neither complete nor systematic. Numbers in 
the text refer to this list. 

i. A. W. Small, General Sociology. 
2. C. Andler, Frightfulness in Theory and Practice. 
- 3. W. E. Walling, The Sociologists and the War. 

4. H. Hauser, Germany's Commercial Grip of the World. 

5. J. F. O'Ryan and W. D. A. Anderson, The Modern Army in 

Action. 

6. R. Dunn, Five Fronts. 

7. Mrs. Henry Hobhouse, I Appeal Unto Caesar. 

8. F. H. Giddings, The Western Hemisphere in the World of 

To-morrow. 

9. O. H. Kahn, Prussianized Germany. 

10. C. Mitchell, Evolution and the War. 

11. A. Wehrmann, Deutsche Aufsaetze Ueber den Weltkrieg, etc. 

12. J. P. Bang, Hurrah and Hallelujah. 
-c-13. E. Boutroux, Philosophy and the War. 

14. M. A. Morrison, Sidelights on Germany. 

15. R. Lehmann, Was 1st Deutsch? (In Vom kommenden 

Frieden.) 

16. Durkheim, Germany Over All. 

17. H. Bergson, The Meaning of the War. 

18. J. Burnet, Higher Education and the War. 

- 19. C. L. Drawbridge, The War and Religious Ideals. 

20. M. Dide, Les Emotions et la Guerre. 

21. D. G. Brinton, The Basis of Social Relations. 

22. Ernesta R. Bullitt, An Uncensored Diary from the Central 

Empires. 

23. Hundert Briefe Aus dem Felde. 

24. Mrs. Denis O'Sullivan, Harry Butters " An American Citi- 

zen. 
--25. W. Irwin, Men, Women and War. 
26. G. Roethe, Von Deutscher Art and Kultur. 

327 



328 Bibliography 

27. J. W. Gerard, My Four Years in Germany. 

28. W. R. Roberts, Patriotic Poetry : Greek and English. 

29. Schmitz, Das Wirkliche Deutschland. 

30. Redier, Comrades in Courage. 

31. Igglesden, Out There. 

32. Madame Lucy Hoesch-Ernst, Patriotismus und Patriotitis. 

33. W. E. Ritter, War, Science and Civilization. 

34. Hobhouse, The World in Conflict. 

35. G. S. Fullerton, Germany of To-day. 
.36. A. Pinchot, War and the King Trust. 
-37- J- T. MacCurdy, The Psychology of War. 

38. E. L. Fox, Behind the Scenes in Warring Germany. 

39. J. Chapman, Deutschland Ueber Alles. 

40. G. Blondel, Les Embarras de l'Allemagne. 

41. P. Bigelow, The German Emperor and His Eastern Neigh- 

bors. 

42. G. Le Bon, The Psychology of the Great War. 

43. T. A. Cook, Kultur and Catastrophe. 

44. Cheradame, The German Plat Unmasked. 

45. J, B. Booth, The Gentle Cultured German. 

46. J. Claes, The German Mole. 

47. T. F. A. Smith, The Soul of Germany. 

48. W. N. Willis, What Germany Wants. 

49. Hintze, The Meaning of the War. (Modern Germany.) 

50. Zitelmann, The War and International Law. (Modern 

Germany.) 

51. Schmoller, Origin and Nature of German Institutions. 

(Modern Germany.) 

52. Hintze, Germany and the World Powers. (Modern Ger- 

many.) 

53. F. Meinecke, Kultur Policy of Power and Militarism. 

(Modern Germany.) 
-54. O. G. Villard, Germany Embattled. 

55. E. J. Dillon, Ourselves and Germany. 

56. R. MacFall, Germany at Bay. 

57. C. Tower, Changing Germany. 

58. W. R. Thayer, Germany vs. Civilization. 

59. Lamprecht, What Is History? 

60. B. T. Curtin, The Land of Deepening Shadows. 

61. P. Bigelow, Prussian Memories. 

62. E. Troeltsch, The Spirit of German Kultur. (Modern Ger- 

many.) 

63. A. Guilland, Modern Germany and Her Historians. 

64. T. F. A. Smith, What Germany Thinks. 



Bibliography 329 

65. Von Biilow, Imperial Germany. 

66. J. A. Cramb, Germany and England. 

67. G. Bourdon, The German Enigma. 

68. P. Collier, Germany and Germans. 

J69. H. B. Swope, Inside the German Empire. 

70. Sumner, Folkways. 

71. J. Novicow, Les Luttes Entre Societes Humaines en Leur 

Phases Successives. 

72. H. Gibson, A Journal from Our Legation in Belgium. 

73. A. M. Pooley, Japan at the Cross-Roads. 

74. F. J. Adkins, The War. 

-75. H. E. Powers, The Things Men Fight For. 

76. J. M'Cabe, The Soul of Europe. 

yy. Scheler, Der Genius des Krieges und der Deutsche Krieg. 

78. S. Freud, Reflections on War and Death. 

79. Nicolai, Die Biologie des Krieges. 

80. P. Gibbs, The Soul of the War. 

81. T. Roosevelt, America and the World War. 

82. W. Trotter, Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War. 

83. J. Novicow, Der Krieg und Seine Angeblichen Wohltaten. 
—84. G. R. S. Taylor, The Psychology of the Great War. 

85. W. Wundt, Die Nationen und Ihre Philosophic 

86. Nusbaum, Der Krieg im Lichte der Biologie. 

87. Edith Wharton, Fighting France. 

88. Crile, A Mechanistic View of War and Peace. 

89. Eleanor M. Sidgwick, The Morality of Strife in Relation to 

the War. (The International Crisis.) 

90. G. Murray, Herd Instinct and the War. (The International 

Crisis.) 

91. Bosanquet, Patriotism in the Perfect State. (The Interna- 

tional Crisis.) 

92. A. G. Bradley, International Morality. (The International 

Crisis.) 
—93. L. P. Jacks, The Changing Mind of a Nation at War. (The 
International Crisis.) 

94. G. F. Stout, War and Hatred. (The International Crisis.) 

95. E. Mach, What Germany Wants. 

96. F. Peil, Der Weltkrieg. 

97. T. Veblen, The Nature of Peace. 

98. Hirschfeld, Kriegsbiologisches. 

99. H. A. Gibbons, The New Map of Europe. 
_ 100. F. C. Howe, Why War? 



INDEX 



Esthetic, elements in war, 70-77; 

in education, 230, 315-318 
Aggressive instinct, 40-45 
American life, 248; mores, 221 
Anger, 14 
Autocracy and democracy, 104 

Bergson, 36, 101, no 
Biological principles, 3 ff. 
Bourdon, go, 129 
Boutroux, 55, 101, 236 
Boy Scouts, 198 
British Labor Party, 273 
Burnet, 311 

Cannibalism, 13-14 

Causes in war, 97-109 

Chapman, 52 

Christianity, 307 

City, moods, 188, 278; school, 190 

Civics, 264 

Claes, 129 

Cleveland, 260 

Cobden, 137 

Collier, 90 

Colonies, 129 

Combat, instinct of, 53-58 

Conscientious objectors, 200 

Consciousness of kind, 8 

Cramb, 75, 256 

Creative activity, 283 

Darwin, in 

Death, 71 

Democracy, 232, 253 ff. ; spirit of, 

185-191 
Dickinson, 261 
Dide, 52 
Dillon, 102, 272 
Display, 74 



Dominant, 35 
Drawbridge, 102 
Duelling, 93 
Durkheim, 115 

Economic factors, 128-141 

Economy, 275 

Ecstasy, 23, 64 

Educational problems, 161-167 

Empire, 148 

England, 123, 244 

Fear, 14, 41 
Ferrero, 52 
Feudalism, 35 
Finance, 134 
French, The, 24, 55, 244 
Freudians, 20 
Future, The, viii 

Germany, 34, 43, 50, 55, 89, 98, 106, 
115, 124, 126, 198, 239, 245 

Gibbs, 54 

Government, 242 ff. ; functions of, 
251 

Hatred, 46-52 
Herd, The, 4, 10, 18, 57, 62 
Heroes, 234 
Hintze, 99 
Hirschfeld, 23 

Historical causes in war, 149 
History, teaching of, 173, 266 
Hobhouse, 101 
Hobson, 260 
Hocking, 167 
Home-love, 81, 216 
Homogeneity of species, 60 
Howe, 135, 136 
Hullquist, 137 
331 



33* 



Index 



Humanism, 309, 314 
Humanities, 312 

Industrialism, 33, 134, 220 
Industry, and education, 269-289; 

the higher, 184 
Instincts, 4-5, 28, 38-69 
Institutional factors in war, 125 
International law, 192 
Internationalism, 168-196 
Intoxication motive, 31 

James, 266 
Japanese, 90, 119 
Jones, 21 
Justice, 205, 311 

Lamprecht, 34 

Land hunger, 131 

Leadership, 84, 142, 176 

LeBon, 3, 18, 102, m, 119, 129, 

135, 244 
Lehmann, 237 
Loyalty, 228; to leaders, 231 

M'Cabe, 9 

MacCurdy, 48, 56, 58, 201 

Mach, 135 

Marot, 284 

Militarism, 197 ff. 

Military training, 208-210 

Mitchell, 9 

Moods, in education, 319 

Moral influences in war, 1 17-127 

Murray, 18 

Mysticism, 120 

Napoleon, 113 

National, character study, 224 ; de- 
sires, 175 ; honor, 88-96 

Nationalism, 79-96; and interna- 
tionalism, 105 

Nicolai, 3, 19, 56, 70, 78, 129, 217 

Nietzsche, 1 10 

Novicow, 19, 137 

Noyes, 271 

Nusbaum, 45 

Nutritional motive, 38 



Objectives, 140, 143 
O'Ryan and Anderson, 45 
Ostwald, 98 

Pacifists, 200 

Patriotism, 79-96, 211-241; ele- 
ments of, 80, 215 

Patten, 115 

Peace, 197 ff. ; ideals of, vi, 205 

Pessimism, 43 

Pfister, 45 

Philosophical, attitude, 194; influ- 
ences in war, 110-116 

Political, education, 242-268; fac- 
tors, 142-152; ideals, 235 

Power, motive of, 29, 130 

Powers, 130 

Practical interests, 180-183 

Praise of war, 199 

Preparedness, 208-210 

President of the United States, 
102 

Pressure of population, 129 

Preventive wars, 44 

Primitive tendencies, 38 

Progress, v, 321 

Property, 138 

Prophets, viii-ix 

Psycho-analysis, 179 

Race patriotism, 226 

Rationalism and humanism, 107 

Recreational life, 303 

Redier, 85 

Religion and education, 305-308 

Religious influences in war, 117- 

127 
Reproductive motive, 38, 66, 7^, 76 
Reuter, Frau, 51 

Reversion theories of war, 17-23 
Russell, 17, 167, 246, 305 



Savorgnan, 201 
Scheler, 7, 47 
Sciences, 314 
Scientific movement, 112 
Selection, 5 ff. 



Index 



333 



Sexes, 299 

Smith, 51 

Social, education, 282ff., 290-304; 
feeling, 82; history, 301; in- 
stincts, 58 ; solidarity, 63 

Socialism, 259 

Specialization, 281 

Stevens, 138 

Sumner, 121, 132 

Synthesis of causes, I53~ I 57 

Thayer, 56 
Thrift, 285 
Tower, 98 



Tragedy, 71 

Trotter, 9, 18, 58, 233, 291, 295 

Unconscious motives, 17 ff. 
Universal language, 193 

Veblen, 46, 78, 137 
Venezelos, 151 
Von Biilow, 115 

War, as dramatic story, 22; mo- 
tives of, vii, 13, 15; moods, 25 
ff., 70 ff. ; origin of, 3 ff- 

World, idea, 170; organization, 191 

Wundt, 90 



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